by Brian Taylor

Created on: January 25, 2010

This is gonna be a long one folks. It's not going to be my Shame Theory paper in it's entirety, but nearly the entire second part. This is because, unlike the other writers who have tackled this topic by addressing one problem or other, I will be addressing one of the major global causations of many of these problems, namely: "The Rampant Ineptitude of Modernity as exemplified by a failing adherence to needless systemic complexity.

To answer the question "How is it that complexity has become a "problem in the world today" we will examine some very current events.

Part One: Information Age Modernity.

     Modernity is a word generally used to describe what we, in this age, would consider “Modern Times.” There is some debate about how far back “these times” should go, or conversely that we are already into “Post Modernity,” mostly because of high technology. Others contend that Modernity stretches back only to our ability to be cross cultural, moving trade, organizing society into specialized segments, basically “creating the system” with which we now live. (This takes us back to about the seventeenth century, just before the industrial revolution.) I'm somewhere in the middle on the “when” of modernity but I think the important deliberations centre around the inherent dangers of programming dynamic social systems.

    Since the advent of telecommunications, radio, television, computer, internet, satellite and the peripherals they bring with them, we are constantly inundated with information. So it is that we too, despite being free of any bureaucracy insisted upon us, find our own, I call this age of auto-bureaucracy, Information Age Modernity. So without even blinking, we have ourselves, like our ancestors, broken free into the Universe of choice only to reassemble in our own governments and religions. Just as an example, consider “the News.” It wasn't that long ago that one could sit down at 6:00 and watch “the News.” If one wanted to hear opinion, speculation or “infotainment,” one would have to watch a “Magazine” show, like 20/20 or 60 minutes. Now all News is a “Magazine” show. With 24 hours to fill, it's not surprising that News Anchors must blather on with “Experts” in an attempt to fill up time until something new happens, or the story “develops.” Where “The Message”

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