Nuanced Improvement

Imagine a scientist invents a miraculous new drug. It cures most diseases and extends human life by about ten years, with a dramatic increase in the quality of those years as well. It has a side effect, though; about once a month or so, those who have taken the treatment will randomly slap someone near them, probably delivering a stinging or even painful blow.

Is this a “good” drug? Right away, that’s a nuanced question. Undeniably the total good outweighs the total harm done by the treatment, but the effects aren’t evenly distributed. You get your disease cured; I get slapped in the face. Would I take a slap in the face once a month to have ten more years with my father? Absolutely. But I can’t assume everyone would make that choice, and I can’t make that choice for everyone.

But now here’s the real nuance – what should be done about the treatment, as the scientist, or the scientific community, or anyone able to influence them?

I think there are multiple wrong approaches. I think one wrong approach is to get rid of the drug entirely. The medicine is good; society-wide, it’s better than the alternative. But, importantly, I don’t think that justifies the opposite approach. The opposite approach is to say “Look, this is the greatest medicine humanity has ever seen, and if that means some people have to get slapped in the face, then suck it up because it could be a lot worse.”

The right approach is the hardest, most nuanced path. The right approach is to be glad of the wonderful boon that the medicine grants, while still working hard on eliminating or mitigating that side effect, and making sure that your work to do so doesn’t get rid of whatever element makes the medicine work in the first place.

This is the analogy for… pretty much everything. Lots of things, from countries to companies to relationships to jobs to homes to everything fall into the category of “overall good, but with some problems.” And very often, depending on which side of that you’re experiencing now or just your overall values, we err too far to one side or the other.

We say “This job makes me work 15 minutes of unpaid overtime on Tuesdays, so I’m going to quit,” despite the fact that it’s overall a good job overall that serves your life well. Or we say the opposite: “I would never even think about trying to object to that unpaid overtime, because the job is the best job I’ve ever had otherwise and being unemployed is way worse.” The nuanced view is much harder. The nuanced approach requires us to advocate against unpaid overtime, while still keeping the job, and making sure that the way we’re advocating against the bad policy is consistent with building the rapport that keeps the job.

Sometimes good things have “load-bearing problems.” That’s a term I’ll give to unpleasant aspects of a good thing that somehow are essential to that good thing’s existence. You love your dog but hate cleaning up its poop – but guess what, the dog pooping is essential to the dog continuing to exist. So the nuanced view requires you to find better and better ways to mitigate the bad thing, like training the dog not to poop on the floor and investing in a scooper gadget, etc. It involves neither getting rid of the dog entirely nor saying “It can poop wherever it wants, because having a dog is awesome and no one should say otherwise!”

The nuanced view also requires a level of serenity in our interactions with others. If someone complains that there’s always dog poop on your floor when they visit, you can’t treat them like they hate dogs and have suggested you not own one. And if someone says they love dogs, you can’t treat them like what they just said was “I love poop.”

(I get that one a fair amount as a dad; when I say how much I love kids, especially babies, there’s usually one childless person who will sarcastically comment “Oh, so you love crying and screaming and changing diapers?!” Same principle.)

We should always seek to improve the things we love, be realistic about their flaws, and be graceful to others who may experience more of the flaws than the benefits. If a thing is good, then it’s worth it.