We learn from our mistakes

The complexity paradox: why an interconnected world makes us more afraid

Despite global progress in health, education and poverty, the perception of insecurity is growing due to outdated decision-making models and short-term incentives

by Alessandro Cravera*

8 April 2026

4' min read

Translated by AI

Versione italiana

4' min read

Translated by AI

Versione italiana

We are living within a paradox, but perhaps we do not realise it. In recent decades, technology and socio-economic globalisation processes have made reality profoundly more interconnected than in the past. Value chains cross continents, information circulates in real time and it is quite evident that local choices often produce global effects. We are therefore living in a reality where complexity is the ordinary condition of our collective existence.

As Francois Jullien would say, this moment in history brings with it a natural inclination towards an awareness of interdependence and, consequently, should favour the emergence of models of cooperation on a global scale and a widespread orientation towards strategies geared towards the common good and sustainability. We should therefore live in a context that naturally leads us to a better, prosperous and peaceful future.

Yet - and herein lies the paradox - we are heading in a direction diametrically opposed to the natural one. Populisms, sovereignisms, autocracies are growing. Identitarian narratives and power logics strengthen. Public conflict increases, debate polarises, institutional trust erodes. And in many societies, rather than the desire to cooperate, the need to protect oneself from others emerges.

The data tell us that we live in an objectively better world than in the past. Global life expectancy has increased from around 46 years in 1950 to over 72 years today. According to the World Bank, the share of the population in extreme poverty has fallen from over 35% in the 1990s to less than 10%. World literacy is over 85%. Infant mortality has more than halved in just a few decades. Violence also shows a significant reduction: the global homicide rate is now around 6 per 100,000 inhabitants, and in many regions of the world it has fallen dramatically over the last 30 years. Never have so many people had access to medical care, education, technology, information.

And yet the widespread perception is one of insecurity, vulnerability, anxiety.

The question we must ask ourselves is: why? Why do we live within this paradox?

One of the often underestimated causes is the epistemological crisis of governance models, i.e. the way we think about and interpret the governance of society. We have increased the complexity of systems, but our 'glasses' for looking at them and the models for managing them have remained the same as they were a century ago.

We continue to use linear tools for non-linear phenomena, simple metrics for interdependent realities, local optimisation logic for systems that would require dynamic equilibrium.

Old decision-making systems

Many decision-making systems are still focused on rigid, short-term targets, underestimating the admonition of Goodhart's law: when a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure. The pressure for immediate results tends to distort behaviour, encourages externalisation of costs onto the system and fuels time myopia. What is measurable is maximised, while resilience, social cohesion, sustainability are neglected.

The quest for extreme efficiency reduces redundancies and safety margins. Hyper-optimised supply chains, highly leveraged financial systems and just-in-time oriented organisations become more fragile to shocks. Optimisation is thus confused with system health. But in complex systems, stability is not maximisation: it is continuous adjustment.

As intuited by Ulrich Beck, we have moved from external risks (nature) to risks produced by our own technical and economic success. The problem is that while risk is global, responsibility remains local or fragmented. This asymmetry generates the social anxiety that populism rides on by promising illusory protections.

Added to this is an incentive architecture that rewards the short term: short election cycles, quarterly reporting, constant media pressure. In such a structured environment, even leaders aware of systemic trade-offs struggle to prioritise long-term sustainability and cooperation. The system pushes towards immediate maximisation, not homeostasis.

When complexity increases and governance remains linear, a gap is produced. This gap generates perceived inequalities, loss of control, insecurity of identity. People then seek simple answers to complex problems. Populism thrives where complexity is not inhabited but suffered. And in this context, strong, sovereignist solutions promise protection and clarity to those who are paying the cost of this inadequate governance for a complex world.

It is therefore not interdependence in itself that produces conflicts, tensions, social and economic inequalities. It is the inability to govern it with adequate instruments. Interconnectedness is a structural condition of our reality, cooperation is instead a political and cultural achievement. Without an epistemology capable of reading systems as networks of relationships, feedback and trade-offs, interdependence will continue to be perceived as a threat and not as an opportunity.

To get out of this paradox, the road cannot be a return to identity boundaries or isolation. We need a new ruling class that becomes aware of the great opportunity we have before us. The Hippocratic oath suggests: 'Primum non nocere'. In management and politics, this means understanding that action that optimises the local but harms the global is ultimately a technical as well as an ethical failure.

There is an urgent need to evolve our ability to govern complexity. Only by realigning decision-making models, incentive systems and institutional culture to the interconnected nature of reality will we be able to transform interdependence into a lever of shared prosperity, instead of letting it become the breeding ground for fear.

*Partner of Newton Spa