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Don't Miss the Fall Edition of the Mere Orthodoxy Journal

Subordinate Complexity

April 24th, 2004 | 3 min read

By Keith E. Buhler

Everyone creates. So everyone must (or should) care how to create well. From writing, to making images by photography or painting or drawing, to speaking, to planning one's day, we are all MAKING. How do we create well? It seems that complexity is less beautiful than simplicity. Messiness is ugly, orderliness is beautiful, and unstructured messes are usually complex (like a child's playroom) whereas structures perfectly ordered are usually simple (like squares or circles). For instance, a clear cylindrical glass vase, with a white flower in it, resting on a clean white tablecloth is an image simple and nice; a dirty broken bottle, shards lying on a dusty crumpled old rag, on top of a dirty, stained wooden table is complex and distasteful.

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