The Death of Nuance

[NWRatCon]

I’ve actually been thinking about this topic somewhat today and I have come to the conclusion that our current society focuses on trauma and grievance to the point where much of our population is reacting defensively to political situations instead of thinking about the greater good.

People reacting out of emotional pain doesn’t fully explain today’s politics, but it explains a lot of it, especially the extremes of either party in many cases.

I think you make a good point here, but I think it is even broader than just politics. In a world of plenty, too many are suffering from scarcity - both in the developing and developed world. Instead of ascending Maslow's "hierarchy of needs" pyramid through improving conditions, we're descending to the least common denominator. It's bad for politics, but even worse for just living.

When people are just trying to find food, water and a place to live, there's no room for nuance. And it's worse when they have those things but want to deprive others of them, just to make a buck or push a point. To wit:

the typical response of “what benefits me” is born of that and the type of scarcity mentality it breeds. Ultimately this leaves people vulnerable to influencer/politician types and being deceived by constant lies.
....
Nuance gets lost in that mentality.

It's the I/me/mine mentality. They take Smith's "Wealth of Nations" and Karl Marx's insights, and misuse them/misapply them. Both were interested in collective success, not survival of the fattest.

The question is how we begin healing and growing again.

I think, slowing down and thinking it through is a good start.

 

[Risky Thicket]

Although there is a significant political dimension to this topic, I intend the discussion to be broader. My professional life was lived in the milieu of nuance. In each of my fields of endeavor - journalism, medicine, education, military, and law (yeah, a busy life) - understanding complexity and navigating nuance has been essential to success.

I have noted a significant deterioration in the ability to address nuance in all of these fields, and in just general discussions.

To give examples from each of those fields, just to get a discussion started, I provide the following:

1) The reduction of two-paper towns results in a dearth of local reporting, and the loss of contrary voices, where nuance lived. Cable coverage tends to the black or white, rather than discussion of the intracacies of a situation.

2) The ability to understand the issues regarding vaccination has been subsumed with a political dimension that is simply nonsensical. Vaccines are neither a panacea nor irrelevant (or dangerous), yet people seem not to want to know how they work.

3) So many discussions of history, for example, are derailed by forces that want a particularized and, again, political, answer, rather than an exploration of the intricacies of how different threads interplay in the course of events that have already happened. And in other education-related subjects, any injection of nuance is shut down by zealots of one stripe or another.

4) Surprisingly, even when the equities of a situation are obvious - such as Russia's invasion of Ukraine, or Hamas's attack on Israel - forces of extremism and denial will try to disrupt any nuanced discussion of the issue.

5) And, try to have any discussion about the various Trump travails or cases involving 1/6...

If you have not read it you might enjoy The Medium is the Message by Marshall McLuhan.

 

[ralfy]

It's not just "forces of extremism and denial" but also neoconservatism and neoliberalism.

 

[What if...?]

At the risk of being blunt... When was this Golden Age of nuanced political discussion?

Prior to Gingrich.

 

[devildavid]

Just a brief comment on what I see as a big factor in the death of nuance. That is the ascendancy of opinion, as in, everyone has an opinion and opinion is all that there is. And the false idea that all opinions matter and all should be treated equally and all are valid. Ironically, this is like the everyone gets a trophy mentality that many bemoan. Yet these same people are outraged when their opinions are shown to be unsupported and unsubstantiated. Everyone wants their opinion to get a trophy just because they hold it.

 

[NWRatCon]

If you have not read it you might enjoy The Medium is the Message by Marshall McLuhan.

It has been awhile, but I have read it. Might be time to renew my acquaintance.

 

[NWRatCon]

Just a brief comment on what I see as a big factor in the death of nuance. That is the ascendancy of opinion, as in, everyone has an opinion and opinion is all that there is. And the false idea that all opinions matter and all should be treated equally and all are valid. Ironically, this is like the everyone gets a trophy mentality that many bemoan. Yet these same people are outraged when their opinions are shown to be unsupported and unsubstantiated. Everyone wants their opinion to get a trophy just because they hold it.

Well said.

 

[NWRatCon]

Societies change over time. Some people welcome such changes (particularly those disadvantaged by existing conditions), and some resist such change (particularly those advantaged by them). Not all changes are "good", but many are reconciliations for mistakes of the past (The 13th Amendment regarding slavery; the 19th Amendment regarding women's suffrage; the 26th Amendment lowering the voting age; the Civil Rights Acts). Like a river, the passage of time wears some things down, and changes the course of its travel.

I agree that the current ascendance of gross behavior and bullheaded mentality was at least bolstered by the advent of Newt Gingrich, who embodies some of the worst of it. He began the current era of "my way or we'll stop the process", refusal to compromise as a weapon of raw power, and excusal of boorish, even criminal, behavior by "our side" but not "their side". All three conditions developed over several decades to reach this apotheosis. I think we can all name some of the worst purveyors of each (and some who embody them all).

It is not that those threads didn't exist throughout our history, waxing and waning in the public consciousness, but they have been woven, with the woof of technological change, into a specific, malevolent tapestry. The common theme - and core of this thread - is the stark nature of each, stripped of any aspects of nuance.

I've participated in many forums regarding Middle East travails. We see protests and threats rising on both sides, and against both sides, without any consideration of the complexity of their mutual, interconnected histories. Resolutions rarely result from either black or white outcomes. As in most such conflicts, neither comes to the conflict with "clean hands". It's, frankly, the in-between elements that forge resolutions - like the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of post-Apartheid South Africa, which became the model of other such efforts.

I believe that the United States, to live up to its moniker, needs to develop some sort of similar mechanism. Does America Need a Truth and Reconciliation Commission? (Politico, 2020). One of the problems of our current environment, socially and politically, is the development of "alternate facts". We are desperately in need of a neutral arbiter on that subject. Finding one, where even the court system itself is under attack, is difficult. Where do we start?

 

[Borg Refinery]

Okay, you posted a similar thread a while ago (maybe it was a year ago, I sometimes miss the test of time). At that time I found your thread and you refreshing and applauded your attempt to nuance the debate. This time I will not, and it is not because I don't think the debate needs to be more nuanced, but because you are not the man to do it. Sorry. After the last time I started following you for a while, looking for that third way of looking at the issue at hand, it beaconed in its absence. You can claim superiority in your life expirience authority however much, it isn't there. Instead you lock the debate into one side that has the right to decide which narratives are to be accepted as truth. There are no parts of your narrative that can be accepted while others are rejected, there are no parts of the other side's narrative that should be considered. Everything must be accepted or rejected with a grain of salt and which "side" you belong to determines your stance on each and every issue

I seriously believe that you Americans are damaged by the environment you operate in. The environment always has only two sides, the environment always has answers to what is right and what is wrong. The same side can argue with opposite arguments on two different issues without even reflecting that this is what they are doing, instead there is a total establishment in the ranks without the slightest reflection on one's own arguments.

Read your own list again. . Each issue that you bring up is angled to suit the side that the conservatives call the "commies" or "libs". You have adopted the whole package, while complaining that others are doing it and that we should do differently. How can you ask of others what you cannot handle yourself?

Otherwise, I agree with you that the debate would be much more interesting, nuanced and valuable if we learned to reflect on things on our own...

At the risk of being (justifiably) dinged by the mods for necroposting.......

There seems to be a lot of truth in this, it's definitely noticeable here but it doesn't seem to just apply to America, it's true in Britain too unfortunately.