In Common Sense, Thomas Paine writes, “The more simple any thing is, the less liable it is to be disordered, and the easier repaired when disordered.” One might think he was foreshadowing problems we experience with our complex technology, but his focus was government. The same notion that “simple is best” lies at the heart of Thomas Jefferson’s thought that “that government that governs least, governs best.”
Of course, a twenty-first century political philosopher might easily argue that the America of Paine and Jefferson differed greatly from America today, so neither expression is applicable to the country—or to any current society. America just has “too many people” for an eighteenth-century ideal. Add globalization, and the notion of a “more simple government” fades to a distant social and political memory as some quaint, but old(e) thought.
Simplicity breeds its own problems, anyway, so its efficacy in the body politic is largely mythical. Thus, the relatively simple American Constitution has undergone tweaking since its inception. And it will continue to undergo nuanced interpretations. I suppose we could also argue that the Ten Commandments also beg reinterpretation in every age and circumstance. Or, take those two Commandments of Christ: Love God; love your neighbor as you love yourself. One need only look at the many Christian denominations, social barriers, and wars to see where those seemingly simple commandments led because of the way they have been interpreted. Neighbor? Yes, but not So-n-So.
Each of us encounters a struggle between simplicity and complexity in a cycle that makes explaining core values difficult. We might start with a simple ideal only to realize that its manifestation requires a complex of actions based on the realities of daily life. The recent pandemic laid the context for one version of the dilemma that might play out again as wintertime sicknesses spread a shadow over society in 2022 and 2023. Government “officials” are toying again with mandatory masks, for example, and with mandatory isolation and vaccinations. Those solutions bring, as everyone discovered over the past two years, complex responses without guaranteed results and generate their own problems. In a complex world of billions, someone somewhere has to interact with others. Simple rules? Many applications!
Apparently, though everyone can see a value in simplicity, no one wants to have others impose it. Simplicity is a personal matter, and it lies embedded in our sense of freedom. We can choose to live hermit-like, but we balk at any attempt to impose the hermetic life on us. And whenever we see those “in charge” imposing on others restrictions they do not impose on themselves in blatant hypocrisy, we rebel or we become angry: Why should, for example, a Gavin Newsom have an unmasked dinner at an expensive winery while restaurant patrons around the state have no similar freedom? Why should those who proclaim the evils of fossil fuels and impose restrictions on them be able to jet around the world so proclaiming? Their “simple” solutions apply to you, but not to them. They perceive your life as simple, whereas they perceive their own as complex.
Simplicity is a social ideal whose practice generates contradictions and hypocrisy. When a complex government attempts to impose simplicity on its citizenry, inevitable bad consequences follow. One need only look at the test scores of American students to see how a “simple solution” of widespread “public” homeschooling engendered other problems, complex problems, for individuals.
The threat to individual freedom arises whenever government officials seek simple solutions to complex problems. Their only recourse is reductionism that bespeaks control of the masses—and, with the exceptions of a self-proclaimed “elite class,” the individuals that make up those masses.
Much of the universe appears to run on irony, and that seems especially true of human societies. As governments grew from more simple to more complex, they have sought simple solutions to complex problems. Big government ironically seeks to simplify and in the process makes life more complicated. Look at the number of pages of regulations in any government agency to see how, for example, a simple principle like “clean water” or “clean air” has become encyclopedic in practice, so complex that agencies have multiple “specialists” because no one person or group can handle all in their purview.
And the irony extends to millions who prefer by their vote a more complex government over a more simple one—again in the ironic belief that the Big Government will offer simple solutions. They freely exchange their individual complexity and its freedoms for imposed simplicity that results in an unwanted complexity. In every instance, government-imposed simplicity lies on a path to totalitarianism and greater personal debt with only the “elite” enjoying the freedoms denied the masses. That path is paved with future earnings, as the recently passed “Inflation Reduction Act” will reveal in the payroll of 87,000 new IRS agents that will grow over the next decades and beyond, especially as their eventual pensions mount astronomically. If over the next two decades those agents achieve the current $62,000 average IRS salary, the bill will be at least $100 billion. The complexity of tax collection now includes at least nine categories of government employees whose ranks will swell with the new additions. *
Jefferson and Paine envisioned a government Aeolus, the god of the winds who gave Odysseus a bag that contained unfavorable breezes. With all but a favorable wind bound up, Odysseus could continue his journey home. His crew, thinking that the bag held some treasure they could share, opened it and released the unfavorable winds that blew the ship off course. Big government is out of the bag and blowing the ship of state in whatever direction the many agencies desire, many of them at cross purposes or in redundancies. It’s too late to put the winds back in the bag. What Jefferson and Paine proposed cannot be achieved.
*The Office of Personnel Management lists the following IRS positions:
Of course, a twenty-first century political philosopher might easily argue that the America of Paine and Jefferson differed greatly from America today, so neither expression is applicable to the country—or to any current society. America just has “too many people” for an eighteenth-century ideal. Add globalization, and the notion of a “more simple government” fades to a distant social and political memory as some quaint, but old(e) thought.
Simplicity breeds its own problems, anyway, so its efficacy in the body politic is largely mythical. Thus, the relatively simple American Constitution has undergone tweaking since its inception. And it will continue to undergo nuanced interpretations. I suppose we could also argue that the Ten Commandments also beg reinterpretation in every age and circumstance. Or, take those two Commandments of Christ: Love God; love your neighbor as you love yourself. One need only look at the many Christian denominations, social barriers, and wars to see where those seemingly simple commandments led because of the way they have been interpreted. Neighbor? Yes, but not So-n-So.
Each of us encounters a struggle between simplicity and complexity in a cycle that makes explaining core values difficult. We might start with a simple ideal only to realize that its manifestation requires a complex of actions based on the realities of daily life. The recent pandemic laid the context for one version of the dilemma that might play out again as wintertime sicknesses spread a shadow over society in 2022 and 2023. Government “officials” are toying again with mandatory masks, for example, and with mandatory isolation and vaccinations. Those solutions bring, as everyone discovered over the past two years, complex responses without guaranteed results and generate their own problems. In a complex world of billions, someone somewhere has to interact with others. Simple rules? Many applications!
Apparently, though everyone can see a value in simplicity, no one wants to have others impose it. Simplicity is a personal matter, and it lies embedded in our sense of freedom. We can choose to live hermit-like, but we balk at any attempt to impose the hermetic life on us. And whenever we see those “in charge” imposing on others restrictions they do not impose on themselves in blatant hypocrisy, we rebel or we become angry: Why should, for example, a Gavin Newsom have an unmasked dinner at an expensive winery while restaurant patrons around the state have no similar freedom? Why should those who proclaim the evils of fossil fuels and impose restrictions on them be able to jet around the world so proclaiming? Their “simple” solutions apply to you, but not to them. They perceive your life as simple, whereas they perceive their own as complex.
Simplicity is a social ideal whose practice generates contradictions and hypocrisy. When a complex government attempts to impose simplicity on its citizenry, inevitable bad consequences follow. One need only look at the test scores of American students to see how a “simple solution” of widespread “public” homeschooling engendered other problems, complex problems, for individuals.
The threat to individual freedom arises whenever government officials seek simple solutions to complex problems. Their only recourse is reductionism that bespeaks control of the masses—and, with the exceptions of a self-proclaimed “elite class,” the individuals that make up those masses.
Much of the universe appears to run on irony, and that seems especially true of human societies. As governments grew from more simple to more complex, they have sought simple solutions to complex problems. Big government ironically seeks to simplify and in the process makes life more complicated. Look at the number of pages of regulations in any government agency to see how, for example, a simple principle like “clean water” or “clean air” has become encyclopedic in practice, so complex that agencies have multiple “specialists” because no one person or group can handle all in their purview.
And the irony extends to millions who prefer by their vote a more complex government over a more simple one—again in the ironic belief that the Big Government will offer simple solutions. They freely exchange their individual complexity and its freedoms for imposed simplicity that results in an unwanted complexity. In every instance, government-imposed simplicity lies on a path to totalitarianism and greater personal debt with only the “elite” enjoying the freedoms denied the masses. That path is paved with future earnings, as the recently passed “Inflation Reduction Act” will reveal in the payroll of 87,000 new IRS agents that will grow over the next decades and beyond, especially as their eventual pensions mount astronomically. If over the next two decades those agents achieve the current $62,000 average IRS salary, the bill will be at least $100 billion. The complexity of tax collection now includes at least nine categories of government employees whose ranks will swell with the new additions. *
Jefferson and Paine envisioned a government Aeolus, the god of the winds who gave Odysseus a bag that contained unfavorable breezes. With all but a favorable wind bound up, Odysseus could continue his journey home. His crew, thinking that the bag held some treasure they could share, opened it and released the unfavorable winds that blew the ship off course. Big government is out of the bag and blowing the ship of state in whatever direction the many agencies desire, many of them at cross purposes or in redundancies. It’s too late to put the winds back in the bag. What Jefferson and Paine proposed cannot be achieved.
*The Office of Personnel Management lists the following IRS positions:
- Tax Examining
- Internal Revenue Agent
- Information Technology Management
- Miscellaneous Clerk And Assistant
- Financial Administration And Program
- Management And Program Analysis
- Internal Revenue Officer
- Criminal Investigation
- Financial Clerical And Assistance
RSS Feed