Embracing Complexity and Contradiction

Around 2015, the world changed, plunging us into a deepening of divisions unprecedented in recent memory. By the 2020 election, about nine in 10 registered voters said they thought a victory by the political party they opposed would do “lasting harm” to the country. This captures succinctly our drift toward binary thinking, in which we have come to regard issues as black or white, anything but our preferred option is devastating, and there is little room for complexity and nuance. It is worth noting, if perhaps guardedly, that this has been true on the political spectrum's right and left.

From the perspective of those on the political left, the ascent of Donald Trump did much to drive this thinking. Everything associated with Trump, every position he seemed to be for, was perceived as unambiguously bad, and everyone who seemed to oppose him was, if not completely virtuous, then at least in service of a cause that was. This made it possible for progressives to live in a world that seemed divided into good and bad, black and white, with few shades of gray.

On the right of the ideological aisle, as president, Trump was consistently hostile to civic institutions and relished attacking and insulting his foes. Understandably alarmed by this, some on the left, in opposing him, embraced approaches that echoed his illiberalism. This included a willingness to raze, rather than reform, institutions for their participation in historic injustice. It also included a tendency to shout down and attack opponents for a range of reasons—from voicing genuinely abhorrent views to simply disagreeing with progressive positions.

Just as progressives saw Trump as a threat to democracy, many conservatives saw what progressivism had become as a threat to the liberal order. (Some were motivated by darker impulses like racism, misogyny, and xenophobia.) This further reinforced a Manichean dynamic on both sides of the in which what once might have been seen as areas for mere disagreement became seen by many as a cause for political and cultural war.

All of this was complicated by COVID. The pandemic deepened division and further eroded our ability to engage with the complexity and contradiction inherent in choices about health. Examples of this abound, from those who compared masking and vaccine mandates to Nazi Germany to those who called the CDC’s policies eugenicist. This language, heightened by the crisis, reflected a denial of complexity and a belief that there was a right and wrong way of engaging with issues and that the right way often aligned with the most maximalist political positions.

It is worth asking: Has this perspective served us well? I think not. When we insist that everything is binary, we misalign our efforts with the reality of the world. The real world is defined by complexity, paradox, contradiction, and, within each of us, a blend of good and bad motives. Choosing to see only rigid categories cannot advance a healthier world in the messy, complex here and now.

A key example of this is the role of lockdowns during a pandemic. During the early months of COVID-19, our knowledge of the disease was limited, and it made sense to take broad precautions to slow the spread while we learned more about the challenge we faced.

As we learned more about both the virus and the effect of lockdowns on population health, we could see the need for a more nuanced, balanced approach. Yet the pursuit of this approach was characterized by some in public health in terms suggesting anyone supporting it wished to see continuing death and misery. Such a characterization is only possible when we have chosen to willfully tune out complexity. That many in public health have done so reflects the need to rethink our approach.

It is important to note that acknowledging complexity does not mean embracing moral relativism. It just means recognizing that good and bad, right and wrong, are rarely unadulterated within a single policy or person. Advancing a healthier, better world does not mean simply keeping our own positions as pure as possible; it means wading into the muck where real life is lived, and real politics are practiced. It means understanding that we will compromise and, at times, be compromised in our efforts to achieve our goals if we want these goals to remain more than merely rhetorical.

It is perhaps worth taking the start of 2023 as a time to reengage with complexity. Such engagement can serve as a uniting force, an antidote to the divides driven by a binary view. It can defuse conflict by helping us to see how even those we may regard as enemies can be motivated by a concern for what they regard as fairness and justice. It can also help those of us who are privileged to work with students prepare the rising generation for living and working in a world defined by nuance and contradiction.

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We are all amalgams of light and dark, creatures of complexity. In this, we reflect the reality of the world around us. Complexity can be disconcerting, tempting us to embrace easy narratives of heroes and villains. We should resist this and welcome complexity and contradiction in the new year.

The world is not as simple as we might wish it to be, but it can be far better than it currently is. We can help make it so if we can learn to engage with it on its own terms, in all its messiness.

This piece also appears on Substack.