Nuance

“But it’s progress! We are moving forward! $var is better!”

I’ve been no ally toward A-button mashers(read: Accelerationists) who cling to notions of progress and refuse to address adequate nuance of what’s “better”, as if defining that alone weren’t a monumental philsophical task. Consider the folowing:

“Abundance is greater than scarcity”

Well, abundance of what? And in what context? Abundance of death? Pain? Food? Pleasure? Obviously a statement like this is not dismissed or accepted without nuance, but as things get grayer:

“Fewer deaths are better”

Huh? Is this a claim of: “Death is bad”? Or that death is to be avoided at all costs? Surely the nuance here is also not lost on any half-observant reader. Death is natural to life. Without it, there is no life - and death has its time to be welcomed. Who is to say or know when that is? One could amend this by saying ‘fewer childhood deaths are better’ but that too makes lots of assumptions and decisions on behalf of what could be otherwise miserable children, or dangerous adults.

Technology scales up both the audacity of the claims alongside the depth of the gray hue. Consider this: Does technology serve as a megaphone for marginalized voices? Or more accurately as a digital pacifer for the masses? Surely both… but to what extent? And to what degree is a megaphone worth a pacifier? Must we wait on ‘conclusive data’ to move forward with amendments?

One could make an argument that framing nearly any question as a [yes|no] strips questions of their nuance - almost the only dimension worth investigating at this juncture - the dimension of nuance a claim or question entertains. Without nuance a question is almost never worth asking, one could argue at least.

I question the simple question, or the obvious claim. Not because of it’s possible answers, but because its implication. Who is asking what? On behalf of whom? Why? Well, then one question turns into many and the nuance only multiplies.

A cruxifiction of nuance in society leads to mass anomie (def: social instability due to an erosion of societal values) as figures and facts fail to represent themselves, only the interest of someone somewhere to whom no one can question, only answer to. The collective bastion of nuance is only protected by those who never seek to agree on anything or with anyone, even themselves.