On Simplicity part 1
As I examine my own preferences around "simplicity," I'm finding that it's complicated. Maybe it's me that's complicated.
I've done a fair amount of woodworking over the years, and at different times, separated by stretches of years, I've approached it in different ways. At one time I tried to use the simplest tools I could find. Handsaws. Chisels. Hand-pushed (or pulled) planes. I focused on the simplicity of the tools themselves. But using simple tools is not necessarily simple. Hand tools are difficult to master, and I found it a slow process to learn and improve my skills. My goal was to create solid, ultimately beautiful joinery. It took a lot of practice, and I only ever finished a couple of pieces I was satisfied with.
Woodworking with hand tools was never more than a hobby for me, and I never managed to devote enough time to achieve the skills I needed. I found another approach to creating solid, beautify joinery when I had a job in a woodworking shop. The shop was mostly focused on limited-scale mass production of small products made of wood and acrylic. These were not high-end or expensive items. But the owner was also a friend, so I had the chance to use the shop's power tools on my own projects in off hours. The tools were high-end, and very high quality. I was able to finish projects much more quickly, and I was pretty satisfied with almost all of them. There wasn't nearly as much skill involved. Power tools are far more complex than hand tools, but the process of using them can be a lot simpler.
So what was my lesson about simplicity in woodworking? Simple tools that depend on complex skills, or a simple process that depends on complex tools? There's simplicity in both, but there's also complexity.
In woodworking there is another place to look for simplicity: the thing you're crafting. One kind of thing I made out of wood is a shelf. A simple thing. A flat surface you use to hold things like books. The simplest shelf I can think of is just wooden board with a concrete cinder block at both ends. Making one of those doesn't even count as "woodworking." You can make it more complicated though. If the shelf is attached to a wall, it needs an attachment system. A shelf might be one of a set, assembled into a piece of furniture: a bookcase. A bookcase can be a fairly complex thing. The shelves might be removable, and you might want to be able to rearrange them. There might be doors protecting access to the books. Maybe the doors are partly glass. Doors like that can be pretty complex all by themselves. Still, what you have is a bookcase. Most people, I think, would say a bookcase is simple, even if you, in crafting it, used complex tools and followed a complex process.
You can look at that process in different ways, and find both simplicity and complexity. Even if you use a simple tool, where did it come from? These days, your tool might have been shipped across an ocean, then trucked over land, then displayed in a special-purpose building where you selected it and paid using a global electronic system involving data centers, microprocessors, and even satellite communication. On the other hand, you might reasonably say "I just went to Home Depot and bought this saw. It was simple."
I think the key here is that simplicity is in the eye, and the mind, of the beholder. You can see simplicity anywhere -- and in the same place you find simplicity, you can also find complexity, not only in the same place, but at the same time.
The juxtaposition of simplicity and complexity is often what sparks my interest in something. I'm a sucker for the sort of message that basically says "here is a thing you never paid attention to because you thought it was so simple. Well guess what, it really isn't." Maybe another way to define nerdiness is attending to the complexities of something that most people see as so simple it doesn't merit their attention. Deep attention to something commonly overlooked can become a lifelong passion. In the most formal settings, I think we might be talking about science itself. And scholarship. And art.
There's a relationship between simplicity and complexity that drives some of those passions I mentioned. You start with "it's simple." Then you immerse yourself in it, discovering the complexity within the simplicity. Then, if you're lucky and skilled and smart, you might find another simplicity on the other side of the complexity. A bigger, even starker simplicity. You start with a simple universe in which everything is composed of, say, earth, air, fire, or water. Then you look more closely and find it's simpler than that. Everything is composed of incredibly tiny motes of matter, and you call them atoms. Various kinds of energy hold them together and push them apart in immensely complex ways. there are countless details. Then you look more closely and find that there's only one thing, that matter and energy are the same stuff, interchangeable under the right conditions. Look even more closely and it gets complicated again; the atoms are composed of even small widgets that behave in ways that are very complex and even nonsensical.
That's where we are now in understanding where and when we live: it's bloody complicated. But if experience and history are reliable guides, there's another, even starker simplicity waiting to be found on the other side of the complexity.