The Gray Spaces

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For a long time, I’ve wrestled with the need to have clear-cut ideas before I could bring my ideas to a public forum. What would I say? What would I add to the soup of ideas already floating in the ether? How could I take a strong stand on any of the  issues that concerned me most? The problem is, I had no conclusions to share about such matters:

  • structural oppression and the responsibility of the individual in today’s world
  • religious systems vs liberal societies
  • the importance of the past vs the idea of progress
  • the excesses and wonders of today’s western lifestyle
  • cultural relativism vs elitism/racism

Who can have a clear-cut conclusion about any of these issues, and keep a clear conscience? To me these questions are too complex, there’s too much data, there’s too much bias in the data, there’s too much bias in interpretations of the data, and perhaps most importantly, there’s too much bias in ourselves. Simply fleeing to an orthodox perspective (be it a socio-political theory, a religious belief, or a simple rejection of any orthodoxy – which is an orthodoxy in itself) and slapping its answers onto any of these matters is escapism and moral hypocrisy. In doing so we do violence to others, and in so doing, do violence to ourselves.

The proof of it lies in the fact that, even for those of us who take the time to consider problems like those listed above, we all more or less ignore them, and end up fudging answers in our daily practice. You walk by the homeless guy. You lie to your friend. Gray spaces.

One of the guiding questions for rememberingcamus is “is it possible to be invested today, without being polarized? Without compromising?” Albert Camus was a French-Algerian (he might say Algerian-French) public intellectual who provided a model for navigating the gray spaces between orthodoxies. Camus played out his uncertainties in public, wrestling openly with moral questions, and openly accepting the ambiguities that result when human beings attempt to live up to ideals.

Looking at Camus, I realized that my lack of strong conclusions was not a fault in my position, but rather its core and greatest strength. I am perplexed and frustrated by the way ideas and opinions are marketed today. In contrast, then, let this be a gray space between, behind, and beneath orthodoxies. That’s where we should be living in a world full of tumult and conflicting worldviews and structural oppression.