Paradox is the solution

Only the paradox comes anywhere near to comprehending the fullness of life.

C. G. Jung

There are no ‘wicked problems’ – only humans who cannot dance with paradox.

Paradox is perhaps the most underutilised, underestimated, most misunderstood, most feared – and most precious and most renewing – ingredient in the universe.

All problems arise from the inability of people to understand, reconcile and leverage paradox.

Paradox contains and combines contradictory features or qualities. A paradox is something that seems contradictory, but can be true. A paradox is the state of something holding seemingly contradictory things within itself. Such as a human. A human is a multi-multi-faceted paradox.

Paradoxes may be in our DNA, but they play a game with us humans – taunting our established certainties, while tempting our dangerous creativity. They present persistent contradictions between interdependent elements.

There is paradox in mathematics, in philosophy, in psychology, in management science – in all fields of endeavour and investigation… 

Everything contains paradox. Even paradox itself.

And yet…

Few minds are naturally tuned to paradox. And what the mind doesn't understand, it fears. The nemesis of paradox is binary thinking. And most people remain binary thinkers and doers their entire lives. Their world is ‘either/or’. Black or white. This is why wicked problems seem so wicked. Because binary thinkers are trying to solve the unsolvable. They are trying to solve paradox. When they should be embracing it.

(Perhaps a scant 10 percent of the population are naturals at paradox. More likely one percent. The divergent thinkers, the gifted creatives – the people who see the world in ‘both/and’ technicolor, not ‘either/or’ monochrome – have brains that are built for paradox. But everyone has the capacity to understand and use it, if they are willing.)

And this is where humans are their own worst enemy. Because they need paradox like they need oxygen.

Because humans are striving, whether they know it or not, to defy the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics (the total entropy of an isolated system always increases over time). Every day is a monumental effort to remain out of reach of entropy and achieve what science calls complexity (but which I prefer to call simplicity, since it denotes the transformation of confusion into a pattern).

Complexity is a catch-all term for all phenomena that have arisen in the universe over 13.8 billion years, from the cosmos to culture. Complexity is typified by many diverse and interacting component parts forming a part of a system that is created, sustained, and increased in intricacy by its flows of energy. 

There’s plenty of dissent about how to define ‘complexity’, but measuring the flows of free energy through matter is fairly well agreed upon. Specifically the rate at which that energy flows.

Complexity depends on the flow of free energy. Conversely, a lack of flow of free energy leads to entropy. Low flows of free energy occur when everything is about the same ‘temperature’. When everything is homogenous.

Think about that. Homogenous. Where and when does homogeneity thrive? Homogeneity thrives where paradox is not allowed to exist. In countries, cultures and companies where humans fear paradox. When paradox is dismissed, denied, repressed. In companies that hire for ‘cultural fit’. In museums that take down the art of a paedophile. In mainstream discourse that uses peer pressure and moral relativism to muffle dissenting opinion. 

The list, really, is endless.

And where the environment for homogeneity is created, entropy ensues.

Businesses die. Countries descend into chaos. The flame of innovation and inspiration goes out. 

This is why paradox is so precious. beautiful. It is the key to complexity. It is 'free energy'. 

It's the engine that makes complexity possible. It is the free energy between elements in the periodic table, between planets in a solar system, between humans in an organisation... It allows for things to become increasingly sophisticated, successful and sustainable. 

Paradox is not comfortable. It asks binary thinkers to accept that things are not as black and white as they may seem… as they may dearly want them to be. Paradox is messy, intricate, enigmatic; it defies comfortable norms and political correctness. It is far, far ‘bigger’ than trends like diversity, and requires a capability for complexity of thought that is far, far beyond most of those who control public policy, the purse strings, and our attention.

But paradox offers dynamite for those who are willing to work with it. 

For paradox is the grit in the oyster – the irritation necessary to produce the pearl. No paradox, no pearl.

This metaphor – of the absolute essentialness (and paradox) of paradox – applies to every system or situation in the universe, from the success or failure of a country, an idea, a movement, a global brand or a romance.

Without paradox, complexity does not arise. 

And entropy ensues.