The Before Rules: Simple Before Complex
What Isn't Simple Becomes Complex. Truth Gets Buried One Syllable At A Time.
It started with two.
The Words That Still Had Dirt and Blood on Them: On the battlefields of World War I, when a soldier’s nervous system finally snapped under artillery fire, no one reached for a white paper, a panel, or a polished diagnosis. They reached to treat the wound, and then they gave it a name.
Shell Shock: Two syllables. Hard. Blunt. Human.
Shell Shock: It sounds like the event itself.
But It Was Inside The Soldier: The soldier endures the relentless echoes of his emotion. Long after the explosion, the war’s reverberating shock still lingers.
A Simple Truth: Shell shock was the first simplicity. It wasn’t elegant language. It was the guttural language of pain, the personal language that the soldier could not yet speak.
Not shallow. Not ignorant. Just the truth.
Truth Gets Buried One Syllable at a Time: Institutions changed the language so ‘they’ could understand the pain.
We Over-Label What We Refuse To Face: Each added layer of complexity distanced them further from the soldier’s truth.
Two Became Four: By the Second World War, shell shock became “battle fatigue.” Four syllables. Softer now. Less rupture. Less blood. It sounded tired instead of shattered.
Four Became Eight: By Korea, shell shock had swollen to “operational exhaustion.” Eight syllables. It sounded ‘official’ and further increased the distance. It was no longer a soul cracking under pressure, but more like describing a broken engine to a mechanic.
Eight Became Eight (Plus One): Then came Vietnam, a new war, and a new phrase was created, “post-traumatic stress disorder.” Still eight syllables, now refined with a hyphen and a white lab coat.
Clinical. Descriptive. Manageable.
Jargon is just the noise we make to drown out the sound of a breaking heart.
Lost In Syllables: And somewhere in all that refinement, the soldier at the center of the phrase vanishes.
The Longer The Word, The Safer The Lie: The truth did not get deeper when the words got longer.
It just made it easier for the disaffected to discuss.
Syllables are just the shovels used to bury the truth one syllable at a time.
Undoing Complexity’s Syllable Tax (I know, I know... an 11-syllable paragraph header): Complexity often begins where contact ends. Complexity adds syllables the way cowards add distance.
Do we add syllables because the naked word would force us to feel too much?
The Before Rules: Simplicity is what makes The Before Rules work. Three words: a one-word beginning, a one-word bridge (“before”), then a one-word destination:
Here Before There.
Deposits Before Withdrawals.
Effective Before Efficient.
Simple Before Complex: Simple names the wound. Complexity names the distance from it. Name the wound, don’t map the scar.
Sing-Alongs Welcomed: The essay provides a framework for your mind. Two short videos give your body the beat. You give the idea its spark.
AI-Generated Music © The Before Rules™
You’ve Read The Book, Now See The Movie:
Before Rules: The Before Rules are three-word systems for achieving real outcomes by putting the right thing first. Built on the sequence Here | Before | There, they clarify what must come first so progress becomes actionable, repeatable, and real. Examples include: Deposits Before Withdrawals, Through Before To, and Obstacle Before Opportunity. Visit BeforeRules.com to learn more.
Follow The Before Rules to learn more about our additional Before Rules, including: Complex Before Simple and Scars Before Stars.
Your Thoughts May Vary: The Before Rules encourages your constructive comments and invites you to share your perspectives and experiences. Together, we can all refine our understanding and application of these concepts.
Disclaimers: Click here for our Disclosures, Disavowals, And Declarations (aka - I told you so).
Learn More Before Rules
George Carlin - Simple Before Complex - In two minutes.
Simple...