What's wrong with being simple?
By Jaamit Durrani May, 2002
We are constantly reminded of how the world's economic, political and social structures and situations are very complex and intricate. But, as Jaamit Durrani explores, the repetition of this mantra can put a barrier in front of understanding the true nature of the world.
When Egyptian novelist, doctor, feminist, progressive thinker and liberation activist Nawal el Saadawi came to talk at Sussex in May she filled me with inspiration. It was one of those rare, precious occasions when words and ideas can clear a million paths in your mind, giving you an unparalleled adrenaline rush and insatiable appetite for more; when you are left with tingling sensations that remain for hours, of outrage and sorrow, of action and reflection - and above all a powerful sense of clarity. It seems I wasn't the only one either: the atmosphere in the lecture theatre was palpably electric, the audience hanging off her every word, and we responded with a standing ovation. For me, this wasn't just a case of being seduced by skilful oratory; it was the sheer ease and defiant confidence with which she made the connections between the struggles of oppressed peoples across the world, between elements and peoples which make up a system of oppression, between past and present.
It is precisely these sorts of connections and simplifications that are time and time again met with dismissive accusations of oversimplification, fudging the issue, and even propaganda for some sinister hidden agenda. It is okay to relate an Ethiopian peasant to a Colombian trade unionist insofar as they are poor, or lack basic access to water or healthcare, or that they simply both live in an 'undeveloped' country. But the moment you begin to point out that the surplus outflow from the peasant's plantation goes almost entirely to a particular multinational based in London, and the profits from the Colombian's water company go to another multinational based in Florida, and…hang on, both these companies are subsidiaries of an even larger corporation in New York, whose former chief executive now happens to sit on a decision making committee for the IMF, who incidentally force these multinational takeovers (sorry, I mean investments) in the first place by threatening to withdraw further 'aid' - you are assured that the situation is much more complicated than that; that to make these links so loosely and connect them to world poverty is foolish and 'unscientific'. Similarly when you connect President Bush's War on Terrorism in Afghanistan and the subsequent 'regime change' to a friendly government to the fact that at this very moment a US-funded oil pipeline is being built through Central Asia, you are a conspiracy theory nut or worse, a terrorist sympathiser. And when you suggest that the current global economic order functions as an extension to colonial exploitation you are fobbed off as 'loony left' or a raving Bolshie.
Perhaps I risk being misunderstood here. I am not for a moment suggesting that the world does work on such simple, polarised causalities, nor that the world's rich sit around a table cackling over how they are going to screw the poor. I fully accept that there are complex, overlapping mechanisms at work, and each situation has its peculiarities and specific contexts - indeed I want to learn and explore those peculiarities. My point, however, is that these connections do exist, inasmuch as they are simplifications. To say that the Palestinians are being oppressed by the Israeli occupation is to examine one specific plane of socio-economic relations, mentioning nothing of the broader intricacies of the situation in the Middle East. Marx used this methodology in his work: the world is too complex, he argued, to swallow everything whole; we need to break it down into a series fundamental abstractions in order to comprehend and analyse it.
I am also not trying to claim that any simplification is good, no matter what it states. It seems to me that the reason that certain simplifications and abstractions come to be repeated so often is that they are the most pertinent and fundamental to a situation. During the struggles for independence throughout colonial Africa in the 1950s and 1960s, the simplification of Pan-African Nationalism, based on a shared experience of oppression of blacks by European colonial masters, was used to unite people to fight for their freedom. It was not true that each and every black African in every country was exploited by the same person or group of people in the same way, nor that there is something inherently different about Europeans - but it was necessary to make perhaps crude generalisations in order to overcome the most immediate contradiction in the system, and then move on.
With postmodernism and western liberalism came the idea that such generalisations are meaningless - consequently the very word 'simplification' has a negative undertone and is seen as unacademic and unprofessional. This blocking of the process of making generalisations has the effect of stopping you thinking a certain way, so we think of the world as too vast, too complex to grasp, and instead become content to leave things unquestioned. A central part of this is an assumption that the tides of history are somehow 'natural', that globalisation is 'inevitable', controlled by abstract, unseen, and almost god-like forces. The retort that "we must recognise that this situation is very complex" is repeated continuously by politicians, journalists and technocrats at the first whiff of (heaven forbid) clarity or simplicity. And so, gradually, this mindset seeps into everybody's consciousness, and we unwittingly stop ourselves from asking questions or making connections for fear of being simplistic. Ultimately this is divisive - we focus on our differences as individuals, our perception that the world is complex beyond our understanding blinding us to our similarities as part of a single human civilisation. This retucence in approaching a world so complex breeds the logic of looking after one's 'own kind', and all the potentially horrible social consequences that brings - racism and prejudice, the break-up of communities, and the popular justifications for war.
I believe that it is absolutely essential that we accept and confront these assumptions within and around us - that we turn around 'simplification' from being a dirty word to something positive that we can use to better understand our surroundings. And at the same time we must resist the temptation of forgetting that they are just simplifications, a means to an end rather than the absolute, final truth - a mistaken belief which, for me, is what characterises extremism. Let us not be afraid to unequivocally state, for example, that in the United States today black people are oppressed by white people, so long as we recognise that this is obviously not the be-all and end-all of the situation, as perhaps the Nation of Islam would conclude, but one stage of many in our quest for understanding (so a further stage may involve both race and class). Our appreciation of the world is always only an approximation towards the true reality, and when we make a simplification it brings our approximations closer to that reality. Surely this is better than blindly rejecting simplicity altogether in favour of settling for an abstract notion of complexity, which in fact takes us further away from the truth.
I would very much encourage any comments, criticisms or points of further debate to be sent to Poda Poda (poda_poda@hotmail.com). These views are themselves not a rigid, final conclusion but an approximation of my current understanding.