“I generally don’t think most situations can be labeled as black or white.”
I was stalking some professors on Rate My Professor as you do. When I began to think about the star rating distributions. 1-star ratings and 5-star ratings often far outnumbered all the ratings in between which was kind of interesting.
It seems that people in general see things in a very binary way. I don't know how it became this way perhaps it's biology, perhaps it's our environment but nonetheless, it's a phenomenon that I think has been amplified in recent years. We often make snap judgements on things that we don't quite understand but we make these judgements regardless because we heard these opinions from some sort of authority whether that be news, social media or people we know. Even though at times we don't fully understand why we think a certain way, we just do because the environment around us already thinks a certain way.
Take political polarization, there are multiple surveys and articles about political polarization and (I'll link a few here and here) despite the potential biases in some of the data collection I think it's something we all feel day to day. We all feel more animosity toward the opposing party than in the past because we get information from sources that have inherent biases - newspapers, social-media algorithms, and friends all have biases so it's hard to know what is actually going on because you're trying to see a clear picture through layers of distorted lenses.
This binary, black-and-white view of events is a dangerous mindset to have because it contributes to a phenomenon I like to call disagreement means death. Binary views of the world devolve debates into shouting matches, because neither side wants to listen (Which is also why I think high-school debating is stupid). Disagree and you immediately become the enemy. I think a lot of activism these days seem very unnecessary - people throwing soup at paintings, people soaking their feet in cement, people yelling for the environment etc. The reason behind these protests are often justified but addressing climate change is not as simple as killing oil companies. All you're doing is making the world even more polarizing; who the fuck wants to negotiate or listen to people who throw soup at paintings or superglue their limbs on a basketball court, it's not necessary and I don't think it benefits the cause at all.
A colleague of mine once told me that she thought Elizabeth II was a bad queen. When I asked her why she froze up and wasn't very convincing. She didn't know shit. I'm not pointing this out to talk shit but I truly believe that sometimes we don't deserve to have an opinion. When you don't know enough about something, you shouldn't deserve to have a say because you haven't thought about it for a second.
Professor Uju Anya at Carnegie Mellon University tweeted this during that time:
Ask yourself this. Is this helping? Helping your cause or does it contribute to driving people further and further apart?
