By Bryan Ergle
Nuance, in the modern era, seems to have become an evil buzzword, something that may get you banned from a popular club or shunned at a weekend get together. It is verboten in political and business speech, and increasingly often, in day-to-day chit chat. But it should not be so – because reality is, and almost always has been, incredibly nuanced.
The world that we live in has come to treat nuance and gray area detail as a vice, rather than a fact of day-to-day life. But if you stop and think about any aspect of anything you have learned beyond, let’s say, second grade, almost anything outside of mathematics, exists in this ether. Why then do we expect our news, our personal experiences and more to therefore be the complete opposite with a sharp dividing line between one and the other?
All of this is to say that far from a vice, far from a nuisance, nuance is something that should be embraced by anybody that wants to hold themselves to a higher standard. Moreover, it should leave you questioning the motives of those that give you black-and-white answers and expect you to believe that as the unabashed, end-all truth.
As a person of refinement, as a connoisseur with a cultivated mind, you should take the time to look at any black-and-white answers – as they say in politics from time-to-time, the ‘ten-word answer’ – and wonder what is not being said, moreso than what is. Look beneath the surface! Much like any honest mechanic will tell you to never buy a used car simply by looking at it; you would certainly test drive it, but they would also suggest having someone check the engine, to make sure everything is working as it should. So, too, should a sharp mind want to look under the hood of black-and-white anything and find the gray haze of nuance wherein the truth likely lies.
Lack of understanding and appreciation of nuance has led to everything from wrongful convictions, to national tragedies, and even wars. One startling example of this is the tragedy of the attacks on the United States on September 11, 2001 – the anniversary of which is coming up at the time at which this article is being written. The U.S. intelligence community had been aware of Osama bin Laden and his Al-Qaeda network for years prior to 2001, and indeed bin Laden himself had issued a public declaration, his so-called ‘Fatwa’ (he was not in an official position of authority to actually issue a true Fatwa) in 1996, essentially declaring war on the United States.
Despite this, the various intelligence officials, government officials and law enforcement agencies hemmed and hawed over what – if anything – to do about bin Laden, as many saw him as a simple reactionary without the capacity for doing much damage. This, despite his involvement with the 1998 US Embassy attacks in Tanzania and Kenya, and the 2000 attack on the USS Cole.
There were many, yes, within government, including President Clinton, and later President Bush, who believed Bin Laden to be a clear threat. Yet nothing was done to mitigate this… departments, agencies, and divisions handled the issue in varying ways, but with the same results, inaction, which likely emboldened Al Qaeda after seeing no retaliation following their previous attacks. Digging deeper than the top page of a report would have revealed more concern, but… that would have been getting into that nuanced area.
While there are many reasons for these failures, not the least of which is a lack of communication, which can be seen in itself as a lack of nuance between law enforcement agencies, there is the fact that so many in intelligence saw a black-and-white idea of bin Laden as a reactionary unable to touch the United States proper, and, indeed, the general idea that terrorism was not a great threat to the US overall. Point of fact, if you rewind prior to 9/11, agencies like the FBI had a hard time finding anyone willing to staff counterterrorism offices, as their unimportance was seen as a detriment to career progression. Promotions came from making arrests, and that didn’t happen in counterterrorism units.
This idea, again, terribly lacking in any appreciation of ‘gray area’, coincided well, but catastrophically, with a perspective on the safety of U.S. aviation from terrorism. This belief comes from a 1996 report by a commission, led by Al Gore, to review the risks to U.S. aviation. While terrorism was mentioned, the concept of aircraft as a weapon was not, and hijackings were an afterthought, taking a back seat to risks of bombs and missiles.
The effective policy, even at the time of the 9/11 attacks, was to deal with hijackings by cooperating with the hijackers. It sounds counterintuitive now, but the consensus opinion at the time (a dangerous word, consensus) was that cooperation would result in being able to safely land the aircraft, and once getting the planes safely on the ground, the military or police could handle the situation – or so they believed would happen. After all, as reinforced by the 1996 report, the greatest risks were bombings and other in-air disasters, taking out an aircraft and its passengers. There was no real risk to others.
The report alone is not necessarily a failure to understand nuance; after all, a report is simply meant to cover the scope to which it is tasked. But as you are likely starting to see, almost all security measures relating to US aviation were based off of that report, which was a startling failure to appreciate nuance. After all, if the only threats were the ones outlined in the report, ‘why then worry about anything else?’ was the idea, because, clearly, the threats were laid out in black-and-white. Plus, even law enforcement didn’t see any major terrorism concern. As a result, screening policies allowed nineteen terrorists to board four airliners that fateful day, and change American life forever.
Carried forward, you can apply the lack of understanding and nuance to the instigation of nearly any major war throughout history, and even if not, you can certainly apply it to the retrospective understanding of those wars. The US Civil War, for a simple example, is taught to many to have been a conflict primarily based around the issue slavery; to others, it was an issue simply – once again, that word ‘simple’ – of states’ rights. Are both correct reasons? Yes, but both are so lacking in nuance that to state either as THE reason without being able to understand the greater depth of causes on both sides of that war essentially makes a statement such as that useless at best, and a lie at worst.
That is the danger of failing to understand, appreciate and embrace the importance of nuance. Nuance can change not only the course of nations, but in your day-to-day life it can change your understanding of the world around you and it can take an otherwise-true statement and make it a lie of omission. Do not let the popular idea that nuance is a vice lead you astray. As someone with a cultivated mind seek the realities that lie in the gray area.
