I warn my students. At the start of every semester, on the first day of every course, I confess to certain passions and quirks and tell them to be ready: I’m a stickler for correct grammar, spelling and the like, so if they don’t have it in them to care about and patrol for such errors, they probably won’t end up with the grade they’re after. I want to hear everyone’s voice — I tell them that, too — but I don’t want to hear anybody’s voice so often and so loudly that the other voices don’t have a chance.And I’m going to repeat one phrase more often than any other: “It’s complicated.” They’ll become familiar with that. They may even become bored with it. I’ll sometimes say it when we’re discussing the roots and branches of a social ill, the motivations of public (and private) actors and a whole lot else, and that’s because I’m standing before them not as an ambassador of certainty or a font of unassailable verities but as an emissary of doubt. I want to give them intelligent questions, not final answers. I want to teach them how much they have to learn — and how much they will always have to learn.
I’d
been on the faculty of Duke University and delivering that spiel for
more than two years before I realized that each component of it was
about the same quality: humility. The grammar-and-spelling bit was about
surrendering to an established and easily understood way of doing
things that eschewed wild individualism in favor of a common mode of
communication. It showed respect for tradition, which is a force that
binds us, a folding of the self into a greater whole. The voices bit —
well, that’s obvious. It’s a reminder that we share the stages of our
communities, our countries, our worlds, with many other actors and
should conduct ourselves in a
manner that recognizes this fact. And “it’s complicated” is a bulwark
against arrogance, absolutism, purity, zeal. I’d also been delivering that spiel for more than two years before I realized that humility is the antidote to grievance. More
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