… he’s a Mennonite, lot of them won’t even use the internal combustion engine. It’s one of those low-tech sects of Christianity like Amish.

Yeah, I’m not entirely sure what’s so surprising about a bunch of professional diplomats being diplomatic with their statements. It’s not a group I expect a lot of outright, direct statements of their positions from.

Just out of curiosity, which words, specifically?

These are not mutually exclusive preferences, they can easily coexist in a single person. I think you’re both correct, basically.

We could even examine if simplicity vs complexity have any coding as “hard” or “soft”, if we wished. Say, a piece of equipment breaks, do I bust out technical sheets, troubleshoot what went wrong and replace a broken component, or do I whack the whole thing with a wrench? I would argue that the simpler option of intentionally failing to understand and whacking it with a wrench codes as “harder” than the alternative, due to stubbornness and unwillingness to learn/change being a component of our cultural understanding of “hard” in America.