Let's hear it for the gray!

To begin to explain how I feel about where we are right now, I need to start by talking about some basic colors.

There's black and white, and then there's gray. And at the risk of sounding pedantic, while we may think we know what we mean when we refer to them, I feel that nevertheless I need to explain what I refer to, and how I feel about these colors.

When I was growing up, like most people growing up, so many things were very clear. There was right and there was wrong, and so forth. And I was suspicious of the grown-up world, where it seemed that immorality and hypocrisy used as a crutch the idea that things were not so clear as we youngsters thought they were. A similar idea, that helping one person or promoting one idea often means hurting other people, also seemed like a cop-out, an excuse put forth by lazy incompetents.

Now of course I am on the opposite side of that divide, and for better and worse, I see things differently. I am shocked that nowadays it seems that so many people carry that black and white view of the world well into their adulthood, in some cases never letting go of their simplistic worldview. I am troubled to be forced to see things in a much more complicated way, where there are often no answers to problems, for example, but I am sure that is what a mature person must do. And I will defend my right to hold to a moral center of my own making, to continue to work out an understanding of how best to deal with the complexity of adult life, to anyone who insists that I abandon this middle ground for their islands of certainty.

I am continuously challenged by the fact that with so many issues that come up, I do not agree with either side. And usually, I have good friends and loved ones who stand on both sides, snarling and gesticulating at the perceived enemy across the gaping chasm of uncertainty. Perhaps I have a thing for iconoclasm or something, but my views do not usually fit comfortably into either camp, and I must make a place for myself on the outside.

For one thing, call it a spiritual conviction, but I cannot believe in placing this versus that or us versus them. To put it in common parlance, I think this 1% versus 99% stuff is bullshit. We all got ourselves into the situation we are in, we all benefitted from the shady dealings that eventually sunk the ship. None of us are living in the cabin next to Thoreau out near Walden Pond, making our own candles and stitching together our own mocassins. Modern society is a closed system, and while you can choose to participate in it or not, not only is it unhealthy to NOT participate in it, but most people who believe they are not participating in it are deluding themselves.

And the truth is, in my opinion, that when you put things into an us versus them paradigm, you play directly into the hands of your perceived enemy. You put a target on your back. You give your enemy fodder for rallying others to their own cause by pointing out your failings and the weakness of your argument. You limit yourself to a position that may not, in the end, really serve your needs or bring you any kind of longlasting happiness. There is a ridgity there that is bound to eventually sink your cause.

Now I know that for so long in our culture, we have been conscious of the little guy and the big guy. Our country was founded with a sense that here, for the first time in history, the little guy would get his due. In America, all citizens would have the protection of the law, and access to economic opportunity. But how many of the little guys secretly longed to be big guys, and what would stop them, once they became big guys, from using their resources to protect their big guy status and prevent other little guys from similarly climbing to the top of the economic machine?

So it's time for us to begin to, among other things, re-calibrate our expectations of what our country is, to forge a new identity. The ingenuity and the fairness that for so long seemed to be our birthright have gone elsewhere. For example, American inventors who are coming up with ingenious ways to create sustainable alternative energy are finding investors in Germany and other countries, while they are ignored and belittled at home. It's time we came up with a new way to get an edge. A way to set ourselves apart. It's time to embrace the gray.

I am not talking about gray areas as in the questionable behavior that Jack Bauer engages in to go beyond the law and catch terrorists. I am, to go back to the beginning of this discussion, suggesting we embrace the complexity of modern life, where no one position on any issue successfully conveys the complete picture. I am also suggesting that we give up on some of the idealism we have held onto in white knuckle fashion for so many generations, still believing that certain long-standing problems facing human civilization can ever be solved. It is more than possible that many of these things could be better managed once we accept that they will never go away.

There is flexibility in the gray, I believe, that will allow us to move forward and embrace new challenges and find allies we didn't know we had. There is always more that we have in common than whatever ideals and positions that divides us. When we stop labelling others as our enemies and give ourselves in service to treating others as we wish to be treating, we may find others much more willing to bridge gaps and lend a helping hand in our times of need. Time is short, and practical considerations command our time much more than idealistic posturing. We need each other, as bad and misguided and misinformed as you may believe us to be. We need to embrace the gray.