Humans have been over simplifying the world, like I just did in the title for many millennia.

I wonder how we ever got better than being savages in constant fear, hunger and violence.  And then I remember.  We did it by convincing people through oversimplification that they should support X or Y change.

I hate the human need to simplify.  Life is so very much more complex than all of our ridiculous declarations of Truth.  But with all of that hate, I am still drawn in by the oversimplification of reality.

I want to understand.  And simple is just easier to comprehend.  Its easier to place new information into the organization that my mind has already laid out.

Complexity ,however, is beautiful.  Complexity is the very nature of life.  It deserves to be embraced.

And we take it for granted.

It impacts you DAILY.

If you don’t understand its impact, think about the last time you drove on a road with some version this as its sign.

How many stop lights were there?

But the interstate goes the same places.  No stops.

The clothes you wear, the food you eat, the way you get to work.  Everything you touch is easier, cheaper and faster because of the interstate.

Every day.

It matters.  And its not even something we think about except when its not working to the exceptional level we think is normal.

A road without intentional pause.

A road with EXCEPTIONAL signage.  If you have a vague understanding of the geography of this country – you can drive the interstate system WITHOUT maps, from one end of the country to the other.

Its a primary example of when government works.

Eisenhower.  Who knew?  He looked so boring.

All the remembered and current actions and events in my life change when I stare at them.

The way they look depends on how my brain is feeling at the time.

When my brain is seeing them from the cesspools of depression, all of my actions look like failures, all the events look like disasters, and I am a pretty bad person all around.

When my brain is seeing them from a healthy happy perspective, all of those same actions are reframed into necessary actions, learning curves, challenges I can find a silver lining for and I’m a pretty decent human.

Everything in my life is framed by my mental disposition at the time.  Nothing has a black and white truth.

Humans don’t have a solid line inside of them that we can use to judge the world or our own actions with any accuracy.  So we reach out to some outside reference point because if we look too long at the ever changing landscape of our past, we start to recognize the wavering nature of truth.

We realize – Nothing is ever true.

That is the attraction of looking outside of self for some unchangeable set of truths by which to measure our life.  That is the attraction of fundamentalist religion.

Yesterday ManuDS wrote a post about listening, or more accurately how we don’t listen.  I agreed wholeheartedly with it.

I have always considered myself a good listener.  In fact my job’s primary function is listening.  I work in a call center.  But on the internet, listening is translated into reading comprehension.

And I think the issue that ManuDS brings up are amplified on the internet when reading someone’s thoughts.   I hang out in places like wordpress, tumblr, twitter and reddit where you can interact – leave comments.  But I also am not as good a “listener” on the internet as I am in real life.

On the internet, I can skim.  Or I can read until I get to place where it sparks a thought I want to express and I can just skip down and comment.  I’ve done that.

I just caught myself condemning someone who started his comment with, I didn’t read the whole post, but I wanted to comment on… And then I stopped myself and thought – well at least he’s honest about it.  I’ve done it before and not confessed.

Everyone wants to be heard.  Its a form of validation.  And humans NEED validation.  People often condemn it, but its just nature and its necessary to our self definition, to our feelings of security, to our sense of place.  Everyone does it.

The internet, or at least the places where I live on the internet, is one large attempt to gain some validation.  To have our identity recognized through our thoughts, our humor, our fandom.  But it is also a place that can slowly degrade your identity, because people may not really be seeing, reading, comprehending.

I think I will attempt to be more aware of the person on the other side of the words on the screen.  To read the words like I’m listening to the person. To not comment unless I have fully comprehended the ideas and views of the person who wrote them.  There is enough static in the ether to fuzz out most of us, my refusing to try doesn’t need to add to the fuzziness.