Please stop killing nuance.
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Everything in life has become a team sport.
You're either with us or against us. Red or blue. Right or wrong. Good or evil.
I’m desperate for people to reclaim the ability to see the space in between.
I live up in the mountains about two-and-a-half hours north of New York City, and a lot of people hunt. My friend’s son is one of those people. When they mentioned it at a dinner a few weeks ago, the table immediately split. Half the people acted like their son was some kind of monster. The other half launched into speeches about freedom and tradition.
Nobody asked him why he hunts. Nobody cared about the actual reasons.
I get it. The thought of hunting makes my heart sink. I love animals, and the idea of shooting one feels impossible to me. I can’t even watch it on TV. But that's just my perspective. My feelings and my experience.
I don’t think I’m right, and I don’t think they’re wrong. We're just different people who were raised different ways.
This is what drives me crazy about nearly everything I come across online. Especially when it's related to politics or culture. We take out all of the texture, context, complexity, and humanity from every conversation.
I blame a lot of this on social media. Maybe that's lazy. Or wrong. Hell, it probably requires more nuance. I'm just tired of every opinion needing a label, and every person needing to be placed in a well-defined box.
Real life doesn't work like that at all.
Most people I know are walking contradictions. They care about the environment but drive gas-powered cars. They want authentic connections but spend hours on their phones. They believe in working hard, but also think the system is broken.
People are complicated. Thank God.
The problem is that complexity doesn't generate clicks, nuance doesn't go viral, and thoughtful analyses rarely trend.
So, instead, we get caricatures fighting other caricatures over simplified versions of reality.
When someone tries to put me in a box, I refuse to play. If they demand I pick a side, I ask why there are only two options. When they insist everything is black and white, I love to point out all the gray areas.
The world is enormous. People are messy. Life is complicated.
That's not a bug, it's a feature.
Maybe it's time we started acting like it.
What are your thoughts on the essay? Do you agree, disagree, or is there something I missed?
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This is so true. Too many people are no longer open to other people's opinions and discussing life's gray areas. People need to get back to being able to have a conversation whether they agree or not with the issue without feeling like they could be jeopardizing the relationship. This article needs to be read by everyone.
Hey Justin,
without ever having met you—I’ve experienced exactly the same.
At a conference—small talk, sensitive topic—and suddenly, people stopped asking.
Instead: judging, dismissing, labeling.
What struck me:
The more we celebrate individuality, the less we seem to tolerate it—especially when it doesn’t fit the mold.
Thanks for your essay. It really resonated.