It's very doubtful that just by glancing at this calculus problem you're going to know the answer to it. In fact, if you never learned calculus (or, like me, your last calc class was long enough ago that this stuff once again looks like a foreign language to you), you might not even know where to start with it. I think it would be fair enough to describe a problem like this as "complicated." Nonetheless, it does have a right answer (I know because the book I copied it from lists one).
I'm sure by now you can see where I'm going with this. While the analogy between calculus and social/political issues isn't a perfect one, I think the basic principle still stands: an issue's being "complicated" does not mean it has no right or wrong answer. This might seem obvious, but I think it's worth saying explicitly because "this issue is so complicated" is one of the most popular dodges that I hear (generally from liberals or centrist types) when one wants to avoid coming down clearly on one side or the other. But that's all it is — a dodge.
The big issue this excuse is applied to at the moment is, of course, Israel-Palestine (I don't want to delve too deep into that issue here and my feelings about it shouldn't be hard to guess). But I've heard it applied to plenty of other stuff over the years: NSA spying, drone strikes, even gay marriage back in the day. To some extent, I can forgive it if it's just an excuse for a personal lack of opinion: "I don't really understand this issue that well so I don't want to take a side here." But what's worse is how often it's used to imply that no one could possibly understand the issue well enough to have an unambivalent opinion, that anyone who does must ipso facto actually be the truly ignorant one, and that the way to be genuinely enlightened on said issue is to, Socrates-like, proclaim that the only thing you know is that you know nothing (aside from the fact that this issue is just so complicated). Other times, "it's complicated" is just invoked as a sort of moral fig leaf, serving to dress up one's (controversial but generally status quo-affirming) position as being the mature, sane one to arrive at once you really process all the nuances.
Not for the first time, Matt Yglesias give us an exemplary version of a typical centrist-liberal practice taken to its smuggest possible version:
Crafting a durable peace between Israel and the Palestinians seems like it would be hard. pic.twitter.com/z7WVXxz1N0
— Matthew Yglesias (@mattyglesias) February 2, 2024
I've got about 3,000 words on the Palestinian Right of Return and I think the conclusion is going to be "in summary, the Israel/Palestine conflict is difficult to solve."
— Matthew Yglesias (@mattyglesias) October 15, 2023
I think part of the appeal of Israel-Palestine is precisely the intractability — you don’t need to ask questions like “is throwing around ‘genocide’ rhetoric bringing us closer or further from a peaceful resolution?” because nobody thinks a peaceful resolution is possible.
— Matthew Yglesias (@mattyglesias) January 12, 2024
Me and the shy Biden voter fam, stuck between inflation truthers and the “genocide joe” psychos. https://t.co/VfhnLRnSCC
— Matthew Yglesias (@mattyglesias) November 8, 2023
If you’re annoyed that coverage of protest tactics is crowding out coverage of the thing your protest was meant to draw attention to, that seems like a poorly organized protest.
— Matthew Yglesias (@mattyglesias) April 24, 2024
These five tweets do a great job of capturing the entire mindset I'm criticizing here: note how effortlessly we slide from "gee guys this just seems like a real conundrum to me!" to psychoanalyzing the people who refuse to accept the so-called "intractability" of the issue (actually they're so focused on this issue because it's impossible to solve) to talking about them as crazy idiots who are so stupid they can't even do a good job of fighting for their own cause (which is also stupid). While contributing literally nothing of value to the conversation and, by his own admission, getting us zero percent closer to even knowing how to resolve Israel-Palestine, Matt's still able to congratulate himself simply for seeing how dumb everyone else is (because they, unlike him, fail to grasp how complicated this issue really is).
Of course, with Israel-Palestine or any other issue involving millions of people, there are going to be genuine complexities and difficulties. Personally, I wouldn't relish the idea of being appointed to a committee tasked with devising the best practical resolution to the conflict. But the thing is, you don't actually have to have the perfect solution to anything in order to recognize that (1) it is a problem and (2) the current approach to it is not good enough. What's the perfect balance, in the digital age, between protecting individual privacy and using surveillance to prevent terrorism and other crimes? I don't know, but I don't think it's widespread warrantless spying carried out by a government with a history of persecuting "subversives" like Martin Luther King.
It is actually totally possible to be aware of the complexities (real or imagined) of a situation without becoming totally befuddled and unable to take an unapologetic stance one way or the other. For instance, I'm aware that there was a UN partition plan in 1947 that would have created both a Jewish and an Arab state, but was rejected by Arab leaders. I'm also aware that Yasser Arafat rejected the Israeli offer (supposedly for a Palestinian state) at the 2000 Camp David summit. (I'm also aware of the reasons these events are actually far different than they've been made out to be.) Somehow, that doesn't make tens of thousands of dead Palestinians more palatable to me.
On this issue and every other one where the "it's complicated" dodge/cover is used, what I really wish is that the people using it would just be more honest. If this isn't an important issue to you, and therefore you wish everyone would just shut up about it, admit that. If you don't want to take a side because you're afraid of offending someone, or because your real loyalty is to a specific politician or party rather than to a set of principles, admit that. Or if you are taking a position that's going to make a lot of people mad, just do it without patting yourself on the back for understanding this "complicated" issue better than your opponents do. I'd respect someone who did any of those things much more than if they used the old, worn-out "this is just so complicated" excuse to try to undermine any moral certainty that can exist about said issue. But to take things back to calculus, I do wish I'd had that response as an option in my high school Calc AB class. It would have definitely saved some time and headaches.
