Human beings are capable of holding two ideas at once, even when those ideas glare at each other like estranged siblings at a funeral. This was once called thinking. It is now called inconsistency, hypocrisy, or worse, indecision.
It is entirely possible, for example, to believe that climate change is real, dangerous, and largely man made, while also believing that turning off coal tomorrow would cause the lights to go out, the economy to stall, and several million people to discover that candles are not a scalable energy solution. Both things can be true. They don’t cancel each other out like matter and antimatter, yet try saying this out loud and you will be accused of either hating the planet or loving Exxon in a way that requires romantic lighting.
We used to manage these sorts of mental gymnastics without difficulty. People could oppose war and still believe soldiers deserved respect. They could support welfare while acknowledging that some people would absolutely take the piss. They could support their country and still admit it occasionally behaved like a drunk uncle at a wedding. None of this caused spontaneous moral combustion. Now it does.
Take free speech. It is possible to believe that free speech is essential to a functioning democracy and that some speech is vile, cruel, and best left unuttered by anyone with a functioning soul. These positions are not mortal enemies. They are adjacent rooms in the same house. One contains the Constitution, the other contains your racist uncle’s Facebook posts. Pretending only one room exists doesn’t make the other disappear.
Or immigration. One can believe that immigration is economically beneficial, culturally enriching, and morally right, while also believing that sudden population surges put pressure on housing, wages, and infrastructure, and that pretending otherwise makes planning impossible. This isn’t bigotry, it’s arithmetic. Yet arithmetic has become suspicious, possibly because numbers refuse to pick a side.
The problem isn’t that people can’t understand complexity, it is that complexity no longer photographs well. Nuance doesn’t fit on a placard. It doesn’t chant. It doesn’t trend. It requires sentences with clauses, pauses, and the occasional uncomfortable admission that the other side has a point. This is now seen as a character flaw.
We have replaced thinking with team sport. Every issue is a derby. You wear the scarf, sing the song, boo on cue. Admitting uncertainty is like kicking an own goal.
Acknowledging trade-offs is grounds for immediate transfer to the opposition, where you will be labelled a traitor, a shill, or an agent for whichever dark force currently sponsors the outrage.
Social media has accelerated this heroically. It rewards certainty, not accuracy. Rage, not reflection. The algorithm doesn’t ask if you are correct, only if you are loud. It is a toddler with a megaphone and a sugar addiction. The result is a culture in which holding two conflicting thoughts is as welcome as a bucket of cockroaches.
Consider parenting. It is possible for someone to love their children more than life itself yet also fantasise about tossing the little bastards off a cliff edge. Both feelings can coexist peacefully in the same adult. Denying either one doesn’t make you noble, it makes you dishonest. Yet public discourse now demands we pick one. Either parenting is a sacred journey of fulfilment or an unbearable capitalist trap. In reality it is both simultaneously.
Or work. You can believe work gives structure, dignity, and purpose, yet recognise most jobs contain great vats of meaningless performative shite that could be eliminated without civilisation collapsing. This doesn’t make you lazy, it makes you observant. But observation has become politically suspicious.
The real damage isn’t that we disagree more. It is that we disagree worse.
Or work. You can believe work gives structure, dignity, and purpose, yet recognise most jobs contain great vats of meaningless performative shite that could be eliminated without civilisation collapsing. This doesn’t make you lazy, it makes you observant. But observation has become politically suspicious.
When complexity is forbidden, people retreat into tribes that simplify the world for them. Every issue becomes binary. Good or evil. Us or them. Meat eater or lentil cultist. This hardening creates the very divisions everyone claims to deplore. It is not polarisation by accident. It is bifurcation by design, aided by platforms that monetise fury and pundits who confuse certainty with courage.
The irony is that democracy depends on citizens who can tolerate contradiction. Policy is trade- offs because every decision hurts someone and every solution creates new problems. Adults know this. Children demand purity. We are currently governed by the emotional architecture of a children’s birthday party, complete with cake, screaming, and someone crying in the corner because the balloon was the wrong colour.
Holding two conflicting ideas is not weakness. It is strength. It is how you navigate a messy world without losing your mind or your humanity. The refusal to allow this, the insistence that every thought declare allegiance, is what is tearing things apart. Not disagreement, but the ban on ambivalence.
Of course it’s possible to believe capitalism is deeply flawed and still prefer it to the available alternatives. To support equality while acknowledging biology. To want change without wanting chaos. To laugh at something and still understand it’s serious. This is not fence sitting. It is standing on the fence because the ground on both sides is on fire.
The tragedy is that none of this is new. What is new is the cultural normalisation of pretending otherwise. And that, more than any single issue, is why everything feels so brittle. We have outlawed the middle of the sentence. And then we act surprised when the conversation collapses.
Toby Ralph
