After the Age of Complexity

On Simplicity, Love, and What Remains

"Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication." — Leonardo da Vinci

Some call this the Age of AI. Others, the Age of Technology. I call it the Age of Complexity—an era in which the scaffolding of life has grown so dense that even the smallest change sends tremors through the whole structure.

In a single hour, we now take in more information than our ancestors might have encountered in a month. We scroll, swipe, and consume with barely a breath between stimuli. Our attention spans fray, pulled in a dozen directions at once. The very tools meant to help—habit trackers, curated feeds, AI assistants—add their own layers of complication. Complexity breeds complexity. The pattern repeats at every scale: in our personal lives, in our institutions, and in the global economy—each “solution” laying the groundwork for the next problem, each fix a new potential point of failure.

Picture a teenager at midnight, her face illuminated by the cold glow of a phone screen. She ricochets between TikTok clips, group chats, and the simulated empathy of an AI companion. Her mind lurches from dopamine rush to cortisol spike, each jolt layered with the hum of blue-light insomnia. Stillness now feels like deprivation; silence, like a flaw in the system.

This is what it means to live inside a fragile, artificial architecture—one that trains the brain to match its accelerating pitch and rewards dependence over self-reliance. For a brain evolved to survive on scarcity and vigilance, the arrangement is almost a hack: the circuitry meant for hunting and gathering is now repurposed for chasing novelty, endlessly.

We live this way not only in our minds, but in our infrastructure, our politics, our money. The same reflex drives them all: add more to keep the whole from breaking. When a system becomes too complex, it is vulnerable to collapse. Collapse doesn't have to be catastrophe; sometimes it can be a quiet clearing. It’s the moment we’re handed a choice: return to what matters, or keep spinning until the system breaks—and with it, our minds.

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The Arc of Complexity

While revising my novel Love Evil, I realized complexity is not a static condition but a process—one that always ends in crisis. Sometimes it builds slowly; sometimes it fails all at once. Carl Jung called the slow form individuation: the integration of the fragmented self into wholeness. The rhythm is nearly universal: simplicity → complexity → chaos → refined simplicity.

In the novel, Sarah meets an alchemist in a remote Cameroonian village. He shows her how sound shapes matter. Sprinkling sand on a metal plate, he strikes a tone. The grains leap into a clear, symmetrical pattern. As the pitch rises, the design grows intricate—and fragile—until it collapses. Then, with a new tone, a simpler, stronger pattern appears.

This is cymatics: at low frequencies, patterns are simple and clear; at high frequencies, elaborate but brittle; push too far, and they shatter. Only when the tone changes can order return.

Our lives follow the same arc. Digital overload, social fragmentation, and constant stimulation—all raise the pitch. Our thoughts scatter. Our focus frays. What was once natural feels foreign. Collapse, uncomfortable as it is, clears the plate for something new.

The reflex to preserve the current pattern—whether in a mind, a city, or a balance sheet—is to add more. But each addition makes the structure heavier, more ornate, and ultimately more fragile. This is true of civilizations, and it is especially true of the way we manage debt.

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The Financial Pitch

Archaeologist Joseph Tainter found that civilizations add complexity to solve problems. At first, it works. Then each layer costs more than it returns, until the weight becomes unsustainable. The story of the late 21st-century West is no different; only our “layers” are digital code, globalized supply chains, and financial instruments.

In July 2025, the United States passed the GENIUS Act—a law that, in the language of legislators, created a regulated category of “payment stablecoins.” These coins are pegged one-to-one with the U.S. dollar, backed not by faith or code alone but by liquid reserves—chiefly short-term Treasury bills, notes, or bonds. Only licensed, regulated entities may issue them.

The design is elegant. The effect is quieter, and far more consequential. Every new stablecoin must be matched by the purchase of Treasuries. More coins mean more debt bought; more debt demands more coins to keep the system liquid. The loop is self-feeding—an invisible machinery in which debt mints money, and money sustains debt.

To most, it will look like stability. But in cymatic terms, it is the plate at maximum pitch—patterns growing ever more intricate, their stability an illusion. When the tone falters—whether from a break in trust, a liquidity squeeze, or a shock outside the model—the collapse will not stop at the edges of the pattern. It will run through the whole plate.

And when it does, the sound will be loud enough to shake the walls of the century.

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The Tone Beneath

Love is the one tone that does not fracture under pressure. Not sentiment, but structure: it orders chaos, binds what is scattered, and endures collapse. The Bible says God is love. Joseph Campbell called love “the burning point of life,” which is to say: it is inseparable from pain. Love always carries the risk of loss; only by accepting that risk do we experience its full force.

In Love Evil, Sarah’s coherence comes not from escaping complexity, but from holding to love as the rest of her life falls apart. Love is the frequency that remains when the pattern collapses—the architecture beneath all architecture.

The Greeks named seven forms of it: Agape (selfless kindness), Eros (passionate desire), Philia (deep friendship), Storge (familial bond), Ludus (playful affection), Pragma (enduring commitment), and Philautia (healthy self-regard). These are reserves worth holding—backed not by debt, but by presence.

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After the Age of Complexity

The Age of Complexity has one inevitable end: collapse. Its patterns will grow until they can grow no more. The noise will peak. The frequency will fail. And when it does, the clearing will come.

What remains will not be algorithms, or tokens, or the debt they rest on.
What remains will be coherence—
and the greatest coherence is love.

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