Complex or complicated?

Wondering is something I do often, though I don't now how well. Still, I have been contemplating a pair of notions again, namely complicated and complex. Maybe it's because the subject came up at a recent strategy tutorial. Maybe it's because I spent three days last week immersed in the details of a software application that had little relevance to the world out here (but we absolutely have to have it). And maybe it's because there's simply a big difference between the two concepts.
Obviously, they have quite a bit in common: lots of little part, lots of relationships, lots of interconnectedness, lots of unknown beginnings and ends, lots of back-and-forths, lots of gives-and-takes.

Take any living organism, from single-cell plant or animal to human beings. What a source of wonderment, fascination, and awe, regardless of how you think they got here. The same applies to inorganic substances as well: just look at a petroleum molecule or a salt, and you will get the gist of what I mean.

What all of these have in common is an innate sense of beauty, be it the chainness of certain molecules to the perfect symmetry of crystals, the complexity brings forth shapes, colors and textures that literally take one's breath away. What this also have in common is that they are natural, that is, they occur in the world as we find it. And what they also have in common is that each of these examples is complex. It all fits together. It all works. The elegance of functionality wrapped up in the complexity of its being.

Complicated, on the other hand, is a bit different. Sure there is what appears to be complexity, but it doesn't really work. Software systems, government systems, pension schemes, businesses large and small, school systems, education systems, security systems ... the list goes on and on. We make these things taking nature as our (role) model, but somehow we just don't get it right. Let's face it. Most things are pretty well broken. Even five minutes of American infotainment lets that cat out of the bag.

And all these things (these machines, systems, programs, organizations) also share a common characteristic: they're ugly. Who's had stood in awe of the Social Security Administration? Who has had their breath taken away (in a positive sense) when passing through customs at the airport? Who has been (lovingly) brought to tears by the site of the garbage piling up on the streets? I don't think so. But all of these things have another characteristic in common: they're man-made, as we used to say, person-made, if I'm to be politically correct (though I have to agree with Rhett Butler here: Frankly, [...] I don't give a damn!).

So, it would seem that at base the difference between the complex and the complicated lies in the simple fact that if we've had our fingers in it, it's complicated; otherwise it's probably complex. It's as simple as that, for in the end, life is a rather simple affair. We (choose to) make it complicated.