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#It's Complicated

This is a piece that I originally posted yesterday as a tweet, in its 1 stanza, 280 character form. But like Twitter itself I have now doubled the amount of characters.

I've said here before that I will one day get a t-shirt printed by my oft repeated refrain of "It's complicated." Indeed it's more than that, every one of these issues is complex, and necessarily so. To reduce them to binary choices or simple t-shirt slogans results in bad decisions being made, "us and them" polarities being drawn up, with those on "the other side" of any discussion being dismissed of as the bad guys, and sweeping assumptions about who will be on what side of any particular argument and why. It's an approach not just fostered by social media, but especially by some elements in local and national mainstream media, and some political parties and factions within other parties and movements capitalise on it. But it is toxic and people who should know better (including myself at times) feed the beast... 

Even longer blog-posts aren't necessarily the best forum to engage in these issues, because if people engage at all many inevitably just pick out bits that either support their positions or which they can use to beat you with. Indeed after a period when I would have dashed off a Dominic Cummings-like epic blog on myriad subjects that had got my goat, I eventually decided that it generally wasn't helping my mental health and I was fooling myself thinking that my humble blog had sufficient followers to make a difference in any debate, even within the narrow circles of the Methodist Church in Ireland or some of the spheres I operate within the wider world. So I largely stopped... Didn't mean that I stopped thinking about such matters but I generally exercised my grand unified theories within the earshot of people prepared to put up with me, and indeed discuss things with me at more length, to help shape my thinking as I sought to shape theirs. Indeed I have often said that I actually think with my mouth open, not knowing what I fully think until I have articulated it... And I need the responses of others to help reshape that thinking. So that said, here's the revised poem:

It’s complicated. 
Race, Policing, History, 
Equality, Justice, Reconciliation, 
Environment, Economics, 
Politics, Religion, Sexuality, 
Ethics, Heath, Abortion. 
None of these, 
and many, many more 
are just a binary 
For or Against. 
And none 
are best addressed in a Tweet.

It’s complicated. 
Freedom of expression,
Toleration, Gender Relations,
Human Fertility, Faith and Culture,
Class, Divorce, Euthanasia,
Ageism, Addiction.
None of these, 
or any of the above
will be resolved 
by taking sides
or talking heads.
And none 
are best addressed without grace.

Selah
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