Tennis Anyone?

It's perhaps strange but I'm going to try and tie a tennis match to what's going on in the world. Today Rafael Nadal beat the most amazing tennis player I've had the pleasure of watching at Wimbledon. And I've been watching for as long as I can remember, my father being a tennis nut of sorts. I can still recall a friend at probably age twelve complaining that all my dad and I did was watch tennis. If only I'd been playing all that time.

Anyway for the past few years Roger Federer has won it all. He was unstoppable. He was a machine. Serve, volley, backhand, forehand. He never broke a sweat but you can believe all his opponents did. He cruised. I went to see him in Toronto once, such was his legend. We had to see him in the flesh if from the upper decks.

But now there's a new champion, another machine. Federer has been displaced. Nadal is even better it seems, though I haven't seen as many of his matches to judge.

So what's happening? Obviously it seems that Federer has peaked. He has lost to one or two other players before today at Wimbledon. So there is a temptation to view this as the end of his reign. But he's only 26. What has happened, I surmise, is that another player of even more complexity than Federer has come along. Up and up the level of complexity in men's tennis rises.

And it's the same for the world. We become more and more complex every day and with every new degree and qualification and technology to do the smallest task. Each of us accepts a role in society that makes complete sense and contributes to the whole. However we have boxed ourselves into a corner. With increasing complexity comes a decline in resiliency.

Resiliency is essential to the survival of all beings. As humans, we cannot expect that complexity will continue to grow infinitely. Eventually complex systems, both natural and human (which are arguably natural as well) collapse thanks to their complexity. They are unable to cope when the status quo changes. Humans, above all animals, have both the potential to mitigate this threat but also to reach staggering heights of complexity.

Do we have the strength to increase our own resiliency against the powerful desire to increase complexity?