Nuance: Two truths can live in the mind

Nuance: Two truths can live in the mind

Samuel Bird

The causes of human suffering is multifaceted in its comorbidity. Not the least of such causes is our own actions. Some of those come from lack of insight or actions, others from a failing to follow through on values or acting on a lower value. This sin as the religious would call it, is called akrasia in philosophy. Much of my pain has come from my weakness in following through on the values that I have. No matter how complete and consistent my value system is, it won’t matter much if I don’t live it. This leads to a question of responsibility and grace that I have tried to balance my whole life. When bad fortune falls on a person, I feel sorrow and desire to console them, but what if they caused the misfortune. We can look at a given instance and find that they were taught by society or pushed by their biology to have an inclination. While this can stay off wrath, it pulls away their power to act and in an effort to give them grace, steals their power. Rather, where we find they are responsible, it should be known. Outside of any formal penalization, which I am largely critical of, how do I make sense of their behavior or my own? I have two close friends who at the time of writing this are currently in jail, but one may be close to release at this time. Others may note that they come from a demographic that is possibly systematically incarcerated, but I look at the micro unit of a person rather than society. I will however be aware that larger social factors could have played a role. I am also aware that either also had specific and more atomic cultures like their cities and families that pressured them into their behavior. As we look at their story, it can be tempting to say they are good people who were pushed around by a bad world, or that they were villains without excuse. I ask you to forgo your conclusions as you get to know my two friends. 

My friend Boyd was born in Georgia and raised in a single parent home. He had siblings, but their unique social lives pulled them away from him. Boyd has never confided in me the specifics of his childhood, but it is clear to me that something terrible happened that made him need to respond to his pain. As we often do, the thing he inappropriately used to respond to his pain ended up being a greater source of his pain. These chemicals that altered his brain’s biochemistry allowed for a sweet release from whatever it was that he was running from. Having a greater degree of fortitude than the average person, he was able to not sink to the depths of addiction and managed to keep his fighting spirit. Needing to make ends meet in a world that had little to offer, he began to sell those same drugs he used. This then led him to work with organized criminal institutions for safety and supply of goods sold. What started out as a utilitarian vocation, grew to be a larger part of who he was. He adorned the clothing that demonstrated his affiliation and began to suppress his naturally gentle spirit to do his work. Some may say that Boyd was broken by the world around him, but by selling these same substances, he perpetuated that same world that broke him. If we say that his world made him, then we can’t be made at his society as it is made up of long lines of Boyds who responded to their suffering by giving into the system. Boyd is more secretive about this part of his life. One notable fact that came about these troubled years, was a long and deep scar from his bottom lip to the bottom of his chin. Looking in the mirror, he finally saw that monster he needed to be to be safe. In a story he has only alluded to since, legal authorities found him with those same substances he thought would be his savior, weapons, money, and a face that they didn’t know covered that same scared child that was hurt all the years before. I am honored and currently tearing with pride to tell you my friend Boyd is now a hero. I met him when I stumbled upon his halfway house. During the twenty five years he spent in prison, he found faith in God and a duty to those around him. He became well learned, kept his nose clean, and uncovered his soft heart once again. This towering monster of a man has a threatening visual, but a secure presence and I am honored to know him. While he is more honest, failing to keep parole lead him to a shorter stint back in prison. While you and I can honestly say that Boyd is now a hero who has changed many lives, let us look back before the happy ending. If you and I were looking at him on that day he was arrested, could he say he was bad or good? Would we have to blame the world that made him or his own actions? His world was brutal, but I remind you that more hurt people started down this same road because of what he did. So, do we feel pity or ire for my dear friend?

As you probably guessed, Boyd’s name was changed. The name he actually had was the same first name as the other close friend of mine. Rather than changing his name to Boyd, I will call him reverend, as he would find this admirable and in line with himself now. While I love the reverend and he refers to me as his son, I know even less about his story than Boyd. I became his pen pal during his life sentence when I could barely afford the postage. We would exchange verses and thoughts about God to uplift each other. While I never learned about his younger years, I learned much about the massive story that led to him being there. He told me some long story about how the richest man in the land was being pursued by the police and by Reverned’s fast thinking and with some divine intuition, he was able to help the rich man out. Reverend went to jail for fraud despite being from an incredibly humble background. He said that the rich man then gave him a large portion of his wealth. This all seemed pretty ludacris and I am used to gently hearing out people’s delusions, but at the end he told me to look at a notable paper to find the story. I found the archived date and was mesmerized to find it was all true. For the years following he offered to buy me cars and even a house, but I said no. A few times he was interested in investing in projects I had, but I was weary. I have since been able to meet people who also know him and see him through their eyes. Some have said he was a great leader and others a liar. I have recently realized that the story about his wealth may have been fabricated. As I considered it, I thought that if it was, he was showing his wealth to keep his friends around. While I listen to some of his stories like a schizophrenic friend of mine, I continue to love him and talk to him while he is in prison. While he is certainly eccentric, he is also a good person. He is particularly concerned with humanitarian work in Africa as he views it as his homeland. He is a large part of his prison's religious ministry and spends much of his time in manual labor for the people around him. I love this man who calls me son, but I am also aware that he has hurt people. The fraud that he was a part of stole money that many people were intending on using for retirement. Then is he evil? What about all the good he has done since?

No doubt you have failed to withhold judgment to some degree. This is not because you are a fool, but because we are evaluating creatures. Consider what value judgment you gave my friends or the specific events in their stories. I don’t think you are wrong to do so, but I think you err if you are quickly conclusive about it. I have limited facts and I didn’t give you all of them. Even if you were to say you would just do your analysis based on the premises given, I would remind you how complex any sort of value calculus would be. If we measure it by pain, how well can we quantify pain caused versus good done in the world? The point is that I didn’t want you to dump my friends in simplistic baskets. Humans and the life they live are too complex for that. We can effectively state that others seem to be net something or net something else, but it is still complex. In your attempted suspension of judgment, I hope you find nuance. Nuance is often used in visual and aesthetic terms to differentiate between two unique colors that are similar enough in hue. If we look at this example, perhaps we pull out a magnifying glass and a bright light and keep differentiating and naming colors until we get to millions of them. While this would help us be more exact, its application would be no more helpful as the basic models of colors are used in part for this simplicity. Here we have a balance of how accurate something is and how clear and cognitively graspable the system is. Physics, philology, and color theory all have this in common. As I have stated before, this is because of the unique instantiations of an entity that make up the world. While they share many qualities, it can be fallacious to then assume they share all qualities. The more I read up on contemporary physics, the more I wonder if the idea that reality can be explained by a series of simpler laws is possible yet alone true. Rather, we can look at it as a utilitarian conditional. If you want effective measures of the planets, use the general theory of relativity. If you want to understand the motion of subatomic particles, use quantum mechanics. This changes these theories from being the case, to them being a formula to use. This provides a great deal of nuance to understand and mitigates the idea that our constructed demarcations are facts of the world. Me naming a species does not affect their existence prior to naming them. We can still use the baskets as I call them, but we must be aware that that is what they are. They are a series of powerful and consistent constructs to inductively tell us about a near infinite degree of seperate phenomenons. We can apply this to our weighing of value and its application to these human characters. If we could assume that we found an objective measure for value and then we began to attempt to apply it to people, it would be near impossible. We don’t possess all the facts. What we can say is their effective value in terms of what motivates us to evaluate them. For example, it can be such a mess to say if I am a good or a bad person, but what you can say is the effective result of my actions in terms of something else. Perhaps I am incredibly kind and helpful to you, which is a preferable value in the given system. Maybe there is some random and unknown fact such as I like to steal money from beggars. However, that fact is not in your possession and since you are measuring value in terms of whether you want to be friends, it wouldn’t matter yet. If you were a being who was giving me an eternal judgment, then it would be more important. 

Pull into your mind a belief you have. You may have noticed this is not the first time I have done this. Look at that belief and the facts of reality that make it seem true and the facts from yourself that make it seem useful. Try to understand these motivations and pull them into your mind’s eye. Now, imagine how the effects this belief gives you could be different for someone else, or that they would not prefer the effect. Now, look at the facts of the world that comprise the premises for the belief. Is it possible that the opposite is true? If not the opposite, is there another explanation that exists? If there are people who hold such ideas, consider their case. It is not likely they are both stupid and evil. While ideas and their relations to persons are curious, you may find their case has the same properties to them as it does to you. Now, did we find out you were wrong? No, we just found that there is contingency on your being right. Before you burn all your books and run through the streets denouncing your beliefs, look at your belief. It may seem smaller and simpler now. No longer is it a factual and grandiose claim about reality, but a simple and humble idea you have reasons to believe. When people have a faith crisis but want to still have faith, I tell them the best way to do so is to make their faith smaller, and more sure. Rather than a pile of feathers, a small stone. While this steals away pretension and no need for self doubt, it opens up a powerful simplicity. This is the point of Esse Maxim. By making one assumed claim that you are aware of its weakness, you can build from there and make a solid structure. Great buildings aren’t designed to not withstand winds and earthquakes because they are too great to confront them. Rather, they are made to be strong and efficient, just because they know there are opposing forces. My two friends I have shared with you today are close friends of mine. I have to both allow the fact that they have hurt people, the fact that they have done great things, and the fact that I love them, all coexist in my mind. This is not to say that I refrain from any efforts to judge value or truth value because of these facts, but that I do with greater considerations. This is where the last line of Wittgenstein’s “Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus'' is one I disagree with. Rather than not speaking on what we can’t I recommend we suppose. And when we have supposed, know that is exactly what we did. At some point, two ideas will be vital and yet seemingly at odds. While an outright contradiction would warrant a refusal of one, sometimes these contradictions just come from a failure in defining it. In the meantime of greater insights and from a need of what both ideas can offer, let these two truths live in your mind.