Randon Musings

Why do people have an innate need to complicate things? We don’t seem able to watch a simple game of sport without endless numbers and stats and discussing the captains dodgy knee and whether it will affect his ability to turn to the left or not. We don’t seem able to impliment a tax system which can be understood by any single person, and when we have “tax reform” it always seems to result in a more complicated system than that we had before. Is is something intrinsic to our reasoning brains, this need to add layers of complication to any simple concept. Perhaps this explains the popularity of complicated fantasy games like Dungeons and Dragons, with all those numbers and rules. Philosophers seem to have taken this propensity to complicate to amazing levels, particularly in these postmodernist times.

I was pondering all this when the Sydney eruv idea came up. First you decide you can’t do simple things for religious purposes, thereby making life harder and more complicated. Then you add some more unnecessary complications to change the rules so you can do a few of the things you previously decided you can’t do. All to support a concept with no evidence to suggest it has any basis in reality. So is religion merely pandering to our inner desires for complication (at least of things we have some control over)? An ancient D&D?