Taxing Complexity
(Are We April Fools?)
By Carol Holst
Copyright © 2005. All Rights Reserved.
Reprinted here with permission from the author.

April 1, 2005 -- Despite public opinion, the current 61,225 pages of federal tax code regulations need to be more, not less, complicated. Complexity is crucial: All matter in our universe expanded in size from smaller-than-atom to solar system within just one-hundred-thousandth of a second after the big bang. In what known universe could adding 61,194 tax regulation pages to the original 31 in 92 years be deemed sufficiently complex?

Surely those enjoying preparations for the current tax season will attest to this common misunderstanding. Hopefully, the President's Advisory Panel on Federal Tax Reform can now be convinced that its scheduled recommendations on tax code simplification need to accomplish just the opposite. About 15 billion exceedingly complicated years have passed since that first second in the universe, for pity's sake, and we've simply got to keep up.

Indeed, the complexity of the world continues its astonishing expansion, in spite of all the marketing campaigns for the millions of products that simplify our lives, and there isn't a thing we can do about it. Just try to select a lettuce drainer handle dustcover (or even a two-handled toothbrush/toilet cleaner space-saver for that matter) in under an hour. And gratefully, most current efforts around the country are helping to build the labyrinth of life's complexity ever more ingeniously, not falling down on the job like the federal tax code establishment.

However, now people are actually challenging human destiny in its yearning to live unintelligibly and are promoting "Balance in a Complex World" through something called simplicity. Thank goodness these discussions tend to increase the size of the Gordian knot, which is the good thing that can be said about a public non-profit group like Seeds of Simplicity. Then there's the Santa Fe Institute, which as a scientific research community "attempts to uncover the mechanisms that underlie the deep simplicity present in our complex world." Supported in part by Procter & Gamble, Ford Motor Co., Intel Corporation, State Farm Insurance Companies and other major entities, it has its perplexing work cut out for it.

Another research initiative, recently launched at the MIT Media Lab and boldly called "Simplicity" in an unmistakable challenge to complexity, says that it addresses today's technology and information overload. What overload? The amount of available information in the world is only doubling every four years or so, certainly plenty of time to catch up and expand our brain capacity along the way.

In addition, the MIT project states that it "goes well beyond removing buttons, slimming down screens, and shrinking interfaces to fit into the palms of our hands" and focuses on "making our relationship with technology intellectually gratifying and enjoyable." If so, it's best to encourage the exciting, spiraling confusion in products and data that will keep our species in its maze indefinitely and therefore, of course, in sync with the universe. Fifteen billion years of increasing entropy can't be wrong.

But for the sake of argument, let's say that human beings actually have a natural desire for essence and meaning in life, not to mention any hope of achieving "Balance in a Complex World." Let's say that Leonardo da Vinci meant it when he stated, "Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication." Let's say that freedom in fact begs simplicity. What on earth would be the point of existence if fulfillment and peace of mind were commonplace?

The overall scheme of things seems more logical when we are immersed in epidemic rates of stress, anxiety and depression, as today. This way, the high rates of baffling entanglement are scarcely noticed by the dazed population. And to top it off, in his new book called American Mania: When More Is Not Enough, UCLA psychiatrist Peter C. Whybrow says that the very biology of human craving for this information-saturated, swirling, rapid-fire society among those who have worked so hard to build it is indeed a powerful force.

Can there be doubt any longer that the federal tax code regulations must become more complicated?

About The Author

Carol Holst is the Program Director of Seeds of Simplicity, A Program of the Center for Religion, Ethics and Social Policy at Cornell University.

E-Mail: seeds@seedsofsimplicity.org
Web Site: Seeds of Simplicity