Do you know the difference between complexity and perplexity? Complexity is the state of many parts thrown together and the difficulty of understanding the meaning of all the parts, or to find answers for the mess. Complexity means complicated, something entangled with many different things. The stem of the word “complexity” —complex—combines the Latin roots com (meaning “together”) and plex (meaning “woven”). The world is a complex (many things all woven together) place. It is not of one piece—there are many peoples, languages, cultures, and religions, problems, ideas, philosophies, all woven together, which interact with each other in multiple ways because all are interdependent, all are entangled with each other. We live in a uni-verse, a multi-verse, poly-verse, and it is extremely complex to exist in such a state.
History is a great complexity. There are so many influences, so many voices, events, points of view, varying facts, all converging into a single moment of time which the historian attempts (in vain, no doubt) to “un-complex.” The historian’s perplexing task is to see and unravel all the disparate parts, and then attempt to weave them together to describe or explain the “real” of that particular moment in time. Our present moment is a complex one—and most of us feel the complexity and live in a state of perplexity!
Perplexity is the inability to deal with or understand something complicated or unaccountable, that is, our perplexity has to do with complexity! The prefix per means “through” and flex means “woven.” How do we work through all the stuff of complexity? Perplexity has to do with confusion, hidden intricacies, bewilderment, puzzlement, and bafflement, that is, perplexity has to do with complexity!
Nothing is simple. Everything is complex, including my self. I am a complexity. That is why I am often perplexed. How about you?
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