I am quite enamored with the notion and intuitive nature of Simple Rules. A Short List of Simple Rules allows us to get back to basics and create a context for what we value as individuals, organizations and communities. Simple Rules guide behavior and create culture. They are comprised of what we believe and understand about our work; the ways in which we act; and the fundamental frameworks that enable us to do what we need to do.

Noted physicist Dr. Stephen Wolfram asserts that the keys to understanding phenomena indeed lie in simple rules and models. "Simple rules can produce fairly complicated behavior," and that has some very important implications for complex systems. Look around: processes based on Simple Rules occur in every area of human enterprise. Often the rules act primarily as a constraint. But they are also used as a fundamental way of specifying how structures and systems should be created, implemented, and possibly measured.

It was during a recent re-reading of Jean Paul Sartre’s Existentialism as a Humanism that I began to think about the simple rules of Existentialism. In this particular essay, delivered in Paris in October 1945, Sartre defended himself and his beliefs in a drastically altered post-World War II world. Attacks from both the left and the right fueled his discourse and defense. He argued that for existentialists, “reality exists only in action,” and that we define ourselves through our actions; it is not through innate goodness but by seeking purpose outside of ourselves that we can be human. By transforming his philosophy into “humanism”, particularly through his repeated example of the young student’s dilemma, Sartre not only mediates between existence and essence, but identifies responsibility, subjectivity, and choice as potential simple rules.

What then do we make of his Short List of Simple Rules?

photo of Sartre snatched from: http://www.geocities.com/sartresite/