“Now all those 23 languages are spoken in countries where capitalism is thriving,” Abrahamson pointed out. “Capitalism generates a lot of crap, so a lot of people are drowning in their own mess.”
And with mess comes guilt. “Our surveys found that 60 percent of people feel guilty about their level of messiness,” he said. “Yet moderately messy systems outperform both extremely messy and no mess systems.”
Why don't people like messes? “People who don't like them might have a low tolerance for ambiguity — those people are made very uncomfortable by messiness. Also, if the mess doesn't fit into your categorization scheme, it might be hard to understand.”
But doesn't order make things easier? “Organization is for efficiency but it's also for control, and a lot of times order is used to exploit people. Messiness brings up a lot of issues — power, aesthetics, creativity, efficiency.”
And how is his desk today? “There are things on here — I don't have any idea what they are.”
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