When it comes to battles over social issues, politics, and values (i.e., the culture wars), most of us can discern the missing pieces necessary to quell the ever-expanding gap between political or cultural affiliations. We can agree we don’t have enough civil discourse. We can agree we don’t have enough civics education. We can even agree that social media has had a detrimental effect on communication. However, I feel like we neglect an important concept, maybe because it is so profoundly human we can barely notice it, or because it is so hard to acknowledge we choose to suppress any awareness of it. I’m talking about the concept of nuance, and I believe it to be a significant cause of our societal polarization.
Nuance is Complicated
The term nuance denotes “a subtle distinction or variation” or, more significantly, “sensibility to, awareness of, or ability to express delicate shadings (as of meaning, feeling, or value).” Nuance is the presence of gradations in meaning and causation, and a nuanced outlook is one in which those gradations are acknowledged. Connected to the rhetorical concept of Kairos, nuance signals the intricate ways that time, place, people, and purpose can alter how we interpret our world. To put it in a simpler and, ironically, less nuanced way, it’s complicated.
Nuance is so complicated that it simply cannot be addressed at all times. Aristotle acknowledged this when he used the term “enthymeme,” which denotes a statement that truncates a more elaborate explanation. For example, if I say “I am mortal,” I do not need to explain the concept of mortality or why I use a passive verb instead of an active verb. The argument is enthymemic in that it is implied in the statement. This foregoing of nuance is natural and necessary in everyday parlance; I do it myself throughout this essay (e.g., my use of the term “culture war” earlier). Truly unpacking every term and every statement we utter can quickly derail any conversation. However, when it comes to social and political messaging, evasions of nuance can cause trouble.
A real and nuanced outlook complicates the world so much that it can be seen as a sociopolitical obstacle. Political activism, for example, cannot tolerate much nuance. This is relatively simple to understand given the concept of the enthymeme. “Defund the Police” is easier to fit on a protest sign than, “dismantle or radically restructure police systems in a way that maintains those systems while redistributing funds to social services that, often, are more appropriate for many situations currently under the purview of the police.” Even this latter explanation is not really nuanced enough for a full understanding, but you get the point.
What’s more, activism defined more broadly sees a lack of acknowledged nuance across the political spectrum, but especially at the extremes, and this goes from political organizations to the federal government. In fact, communication without nuance could be understood as a definition of propaganda, a sophistic form of communication meant to discourage critical thinking and replace it with automatic belief.
Avoidance is Bliss
Those activist messengers are not the only ones who bristle at nuance. Many who receive these messages also don’t care for it. Again, acknowledging nuance takes time and energy. For some, the mental discomfort caused by it can feel like pain. This “pain,” what the philosopher Charles Peirce, in his essay “The Fixation of Belief,” called “the irritation of doubt,” is “an uneasy and dissatisfied state from which we struggle to free ourselves and pass into the state of belief.” I believe everyone feels a sense of discomfort at some level when considering the myriad gradations of a particular situation or phenomenon, especially those for which we feel strongly.
One way to avoid this feeling is to do just that: sidestep anything too complex. When nuance needs to be considered, simply don’t. Take things out of context, project motivations onto others, jump to hasty conclusions, stereotype people, and so on. One could say that the fundamental purpose of logical fallacies is to avoid or nudge others to avoid the challenge of nuance! This is why a lack of nuance in political messaging is a substantial reason why our society is becoming so starkly polarized.
On the other hand, one can take Peirce’s advice and rid oneself of the unease of doubt by acquiring something closer to its opposite: certainty. Peirce writes, “The irritation of doubt causes a struggle to attain a state of belief. I shall term this struggle inquiry. The irritation of doubt is the only immediate motive for the struggle to attain belief” (My emphasis). So, the more uncomfortable one is with how little he knows about something, the more he should be motivated to acquire that knowledge.
Curiosity is the Cure
Avoiding nuance in political messaging may be a symptom of the irritation of doubt, but perhaps curiosity is its cure. The stronger the curiosity, the more willing one is to put in the time and energy to consider nuance. This curiosity is liberating in a sense. This is why Peirce is also known for the simple demand, “Do not block the road to inquiry.” Such a block won’t just obstruct one’s search for knowledge; it will also impede one’s desire for cognitive relief.
So, nuance is nuanced. For some, it is something to avoid, but for others it is a playground full of things to be discovered and understood. One need only jettison the fear of new knowledge and its ability to kill an erroneous but beloved belief. New knowledge can hurt even if beneficial. Some are willing to acquire it anyway; the pull of curiosity and their desire for accuracy are too strong. Either way, we need to emphasize this term, along with critical thinking, throughout the American education system. Perhaps if people understand the term and the benefits of acknowledging it, an immunity to the “irritation of doubt” can emerge organically.