Simplifying that which resists simplification

From Fifty Shades Of Racism? by Andrew Sullivan. A pleasantly nuanced, sophisticated meditation on human nature, biases, contradictions, and the nature of a person. SUllivan highlights the importance of context and situational evolution. What a person believes in one time or circumstance may not be the same at a different point in time or under different circumstances even though the time and circumstance appear to be identical. We seek consistency from the complexity that is a person which often only exists at such a deep level of detail that it either does not appear at all or is only apparent with great invested effort of investigation and understanding.

The catalyst is a discussion about the nature and relevance of the verbal racism of the British poet Philip Larkin. Lots of good points in the essay. His closing paragraphs are on target.

I would simply add that human beings are extremely complex. No one is immune to the primate, private aversion to “the other”, whatever it is. No one is immune from resistance to cultural change. What we are responsible for is whether we allow those impulses to control our thoughts and actions, in private and public. My rather conventional view is that we should all strive as hard as we can to obliterate those impulses in both the private and public spheres. But in actuality, given human nature, they will tend to manifest themselves in all sorts of ways that can be misread or misunderstood if the only two categories are racist or non-racist. And what I worry about – especially with the almost constant stream of easy online pieces and posts decrying the racism or homophobia or sexism of one person or another – is that we simplify things that, in most human lives, resist simplification. By defending the dignity of some, we can reduce the complex humanity of others.

It is possible for a human being to be racist and non-racist in the same day, and indeed exhibit a mountain of contradictions across a lifetime. It is possible for someone to be publicly homophobic but privately tolerant and embracing, just as it is possible for someone to publicly be a model of human virtue while harboring private impulses and acts that are truly foul at times.

What I’m saying is that Larkin was clearly both things – in many mutations and manifestations through his life. What I’m also saying is that we are all both those things to some degree or other. And the spectrum of these varying thoughts, feelings and acts is broad and wide. We are not either/or. We are both/and. We are human.