More than 50 Shades of Gray

I think I may have finally figured out what it is. That thing. The thing that separates liberals from conservatives. The thing that, when you peel back all of the arguments and rhetoric about everything, is at the heart of the disagreement between the left and the right.

Are you ready?

Here it is.

Uncertainty. Ambivalence. Complexity. Ambiguity. Skepticism. In short, shades of gray.

This may be common knowledge to many of you, but it really feels like an epiphany to me. The reason that I hold so many of the opinions I do is not that I'm so sure of the rightness of my own thinking; it's the fact that I know I don't know everything.

It's the reason so many liberals like to cite scientific studies and focus on "evidence-based practices." We know that our own knowledge on any given subject is limited, and therefore we look to experts who spend more time studying the topic than we do.

We are comfortable with moral ambiguity because we know that morality isn't always necessarily black and white. We know that the idea of "good guys and bad guys" is misleading.

Life is complex. People are complex. And the world is messy. We know that not everyone thinks and acts exactly like us, and so we try to reserve judgement for when we know more about a situation, and make allowances for diversity and variation.

When I wrote my last post about abortion, I had someone arguing with me about when I think "life" begins. I told him that I don't know, which is why I don't think it should be up to me to make that decision for someone else. He kept pressing me for an answer and seemed very perplexed at why I could not make an absolute decision. The fact is, I don't know when a person starts becoming a true "person." I know that a cluster of cells is different than a newborn baby. But is there a moment between month 3 and 4 when a fetus becomes more "human" than it was before? Maybe. But since that is a philosophical question, it seems to me that the best course of action is to leave the decision up to the woman involved, because I don't know what's going on in her life.

I've also been arguing about voter ID laws over the past day on Facebook (yes, I enjoy arguing).  So many people think that since voter ID makes sense to them, and since it wouldn't affect them at all, then we should do it. I mean, who needs "research" or the opinion of professionals who actually specialize in voter fraud when we have some stories we heard one time about someone voting in place of their dead uncle? People don't seem to want to look outside their own bubble and find out more about what is actually going on in any given situation for someone else.  They'd rather have the certainty of knowing they're right.

I've been trying to watch "The House I Live In" for the past day or two (I've gotten about halfway through it at this point) which is a film about America's "war on drugs." It's a fascinating topic, but most conservatives won't give a second thought to what's going on in the lives of prisoners. They're drug dealers, they belong in jail, that's it. Any attempt to explain the background of someone who's in jail is just "making excuses for their crime."  They don't worry too much about the death penalty because the person being executed "deserves it."  They don't give a second thought to all of the complexity of situation and room for human error that exists in any human-based undertaking such as our criminal justice system.

Here's what I think it all basically boils down to: liberals don't want people to suffer needlessly when we can do something about it, and we don't want people to be dicks about everything. Beyond that, the conversation is wide open and we're willing to change our minds if the circumstances change or the situation becomes clearer.

So, if you want to be a liberal, keep an open mind and don't be a dick. Now go about your business.