Is nuance doomed? Building common ground in the new year.

My New Years resolution for 2019 was to watch more TV. 

Since starting my postdoc in 2014, I've been pretty focused on productivity. Even the things I chose to do for fun--like lobbying the legislature and writing op-eds--resembled work. My focus on productivity didn't seem to be too much of a problem until one morning, I saw a man on the train to Farmington. I was feverishly putting the final polish on my presentation to the Utah DNR on "The effects of wildfire on water quality." This full-grown man was leaned way back over the next seat, belly hanging out and playing a Nintendo Gameboy. It looked like he was on his way to work, but he was only concerned about getting the the next level in Kirby's Adventure. He seemed alive. He seemed to be enjoying himself. He seemed comfortable with his place in the universe.

Channeling the example of my gameplaying friend, I actually fulfilled my resolution. You might even say I magnified it. In 2019 I watched the entirety of Stranger Things, The Good Place, Dark, Orphan Black, and I even started Battlestar Galactica and The Americans (those ones took more discipline). November and December were particularly productive. I finished The Expanse, Man in the High Castle, and See.

The shows I watched in 2019 were about everything from a kidnapping in a small German town to American Nazis in a multiverse. They lacked thematic or topical similarity, but they shared an important commonality: compelling and conflicted characters. The shrewd peacemaker Chrisjen Avasarala exploited the death of her soldier son to advance her political career. The blind Baba Voss learned to fight like Keanu Reeves from his years as a slave trader. The severely abused Helge Doppler helps kidnap children for experiments. Sarah Manning is a con artist and absent mother, Michael is a repentant demon, and Juliana Crane falls in love with a Nazi. The specific scenarios are outlandish, but the complexity and contradiction are straight out of real life. 

How come we like our TV shows to be morally ambiguous and complex but we expect public figures and political disputes to fall into neat categories? Liam Neeson is a racist, we can't read Harry Potter anymore, and Peter Handke is nothing but a genocide denier. With the decline of in-depth reporting and shortening of attention spans, is nuance doomed in the 2020s? 

Literature not news. Story not opinion. Parables not commandments. There must be a market for complexity and nuance. Humanity is crashing the whole Earth through what has been described as the Great Acceleration. We have the proverbial pedal to the floor, consuming more and more each year. There must an appetite for long-format discussions and reflections, or I fear we are doomed to trip over our good intentions. Reality is full of unexpected dynamics such as scale dependence, induced demand, perverse incentives, and nested feedbacks. When we are fed a simple story about what is wrong with the world or what might fix it, we should ask what are the tradeoffs.

I thought that TV could be a tool to remind us of our humanity, but things didn't seem to get better in the 2010s, even as TV experienced a renaissance. Haven't we learned from Netflix and Amazon Prime that a single act or belief doesn't define a person or body politic? Most are neither Nazis nor angels. It's a for better and for worse world. Why then do we seem increasingly allergic to nuance?

An unnamed mountain on the North Slope of Alaska. I study the effects of climate change in this area thanks to a field station that exists because of oil exploration.

The flat of the valley filled up with single-family housing. The fatbike Martin gave me after I smashed it up in a car crash I caused.

 I hate cars, but I love this view. I hate roads, but I love to watch my kids play in our cul-de-sac.

Henry and I lifted it to some dirt, but this ant probably still died.

This is my friend Dan.

In 2019, I had two experiences that demonstrated how absolutist our thinking has become (or has always been). 

In January, a reporter named Peter Sinclair put together a short format documentary on the permafrost climate feedback for Yale Climate Connections. Peter interviewed several of the top researchers on the subject plus myself and weaved our accounts into a complicated and uncertain story. Like most real science, the conclusion was more than could fit in a headline. The huge stock of organic matter in the permafrost zone is beginning to release carbon dioxide and methane to the atmosphere in response to anthropogenic climate change. However, none of the experiments or simulations the scientific community has evaluated indicate that the permafrost climate feedback will exceed direct human emissions. Also, the studies that have investigated different warming scenarios have found that most of the permafrost greenhouse gas release could still be avoided if human emissions are rapidly reduced.

The video got more than 15 thousand views in the first week (viral by scientific standards) and the comments hammered us from both sides. One side called pawns of big oil, climate change deniers, and accused us of taking "hopium". The other side called us alarmists, opportunists, and fear mongers. Though I haven't read through the 400+ comments on YouTube, here is a sampling from the first dozen or so:

Peter Sinclair’s video on YouTube was a cleverly crafted propaganda video, in which scientific authority and language was abused in order to give human beings connected to the Internet the impression that ice couldn’t melt because it requires heat. 

Yale shouldn’t take it upon themselves to spread Darkness and Lies, so should praise any and all information campaigns about these very important issues instead of trying to quell them. 

THIS IS PURE PROPAGANDA MIND GAMES. 

are you enjoying being a tool of big oil? There must be some outrageous payments, and other benefits. Private jets? Polynesian dancing girls? Your own polo team? Hot and cold running Cristal? 

7 minutes of pure fear mongering propaganda with a second portion of Chinese $$ thrown in. 

This video is confusing after four viewings. This video admits that Arctic methane meltdown is potentially dangerous, but at the same time this video claims the danger is “overblown”. . . The video's message is ambiguous if not completely elusive.

That last comment is the most thoughtful and revealing. We have gotten so entrenched in false dichotomies that any non-binary position is incomprehensible. Rather than considering the science, which doesn't take sides, it's as if the viewers spent the seven minutes trying to ferret out our political slant. Wait! Are they for us or against us?

In October, I waded onto the public stage again (a properly mixed metaphor given my lack of finesse) with a commentary on tolerance of socially conservative political positions. Addressed to the largest natural science community, the American Geophysical Union, we wrote about how polarized our larger society has become and how that could damage the scientific process and public acceptance of science if left unchecked. Unlike my experience with Peter's documentary, this time the response was more complex. I received personal messages from many researchers around the country thanking us for the thought-provoking piece. Not all of the thankers agreed with our tenets, but they supported discourse and expression of diverse ideas. However, the social media uproar followed the permafrost pattern. We were immediately compared with Nazis, accused of getting tangled in ethical gymnastics, and generally of being hateful and backward people. Again and again, it seemed that people were more interested in sussing out whether we had a nefarious political motive (who's side were we on anyway?) rather than considering or arguing with the ideas. More damaging, it was clear that our detractors thought that the other side (in this case social conservatives) had nothing to offer. No insights, no understanding, no nuance. They bad; us good.

Narratives become dominant when they are simple and intuitive. Reality is chaotic and shot through with interacting feedbacks. What ways have you found effective to communicate complexity in the face of false simplicity? As I've pondered this question over the past month, I've come across five interesting essays, podcasts, and other sources.

My mom sent me the first one, a homily on being willing to be changed.

Scott Carrier sent me the second one, a miniseries on his podcast where he intentionally travels beyond his socioeconomic bubble to encounter the other.

Jab Abumrad brought me the third one with his new podcast Dolly Parton's America.

Josh Barro broadcast the fourth one, asking where is the center?

And the apostle Paul brought me the fifth one. For me, his writings undermine self righteousness and dismissal of others. In Romans 3, he gives this brutal but egalitarian—even universal—condemnation:

As it is written, There is none righteous, no, not one: There is none that understandeth, there is none that seeketh after God. They are all gone out of the way, they are together become unprofitable; there is none that doeth good, no, not one. Their throat is an open sepulchre; with their tongues they have used deceit; the poison of asps is under their lips: Whose mouth is full of cursing and bitterness: Their feet are swift to shed blood: Destruction and misery are in their ways: And the way of peace have they not known: There is no fear of God before their eyes. . . For all have sinned, and come short of the glory of God;

Not to be mistaken for a misanthropist, Paul follows with this:

Being justified freely by his grace through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus. . . Where is boasting then? It is excluded. By what law? of works? Nay: but by the law of faith.

To inject nuance to this view of undeserved redemption, Paul adds the following in Corinthians:

There are, it may be, so many kinds of voices in the world, and none of them is without signification.

So none of us are without stain or weakness, but all of our voices have meaning and value. You biased and imperfect? Great! Me too. What can we learn from each other? How can we improve?

Another approach that can cut through dehumanizing simplification is music. With a few partisan exceptions, good art interrogates and interprets the world in a way that can overturn expectations and stereotypes. It confronts us with individual stories and universal experiences. Here are a few of the artists who do this most consistently for me:

John Prine's Sam Stone shows how your politics don't change how you respond to shrapnel and opium addiction.

Taj Mahal transcends divides by stretching a personal moment or offhand phrase into a romp.

Gillian Welch's spare honesty makes me weep over and over.

Townes Van Zandt just teaches through stories and confession.

Stromae is angry, but also indifferent, disappointed, and effective.

Christine and the Queens are fun and poppy.

So are the Pirouettes.

Mario Mathy's Jumping Dance could trigger world peace or a breakdown in the world order.

Gabe and Sonya's Tiny Home relishes the harmony and dissonance of interaction.

Anais Mitchell should be the secretary of the interior.

Greg Brown should be the secretary of defense.

And David Byrne is one of the most important prophets and visionaries of our time.

What do you think? Who do you listen to or watch when you start to forget that the other sides are people too?

“So when at times the mob is swayed
To carry praise or blame too far,
We may choose something like a star
To stay our minds on and be staid.”

-Robert Frost