• Mood: contemplative

Simple and Complex People

I recently saw an excellent video blog in which the blogger announced they identified themselves as a person with certain beliefs, and by that extension, a member of a larger movement. They gave themselves a label. This got me thinking. I did a search on Google and found a saying attributed to Phillip Pullman, “People are too complicated to have simple labels”. I find this to be true, and at the same time, I find the reverse to be just as true.

The response to the video blogger was both slightly supporting and VERY adversarial. The animosity directed at the blogger was not about them as a simple person, a person with their own set of experiences and beliefs. The animosity was about the larger movement that the person's personal label referenced. The animosity was about the facts that the blogger presented in their commentary. I suspect many of the detractors would have said, “Good for you for bringing this up, and sharing your stuff, BUT here is how I see the big picture”.

People have their own experiences. The video blogger did share a personal experience that connected her to the label. It was forceful, powerful, and at its heart, intensely anecdotal. It was simple and truthful for the blogger. In contrast, a label's movement, and the swirl of “facts” associated with the narrative of the movement, are part of a larger group dynamic, a very complicated label.

The blogger's commentary was a mixture of personal message and their own $.02 into the maelstrom that is the larger label. They respectively took their lumps as people opined on the video blog, but I feel that sometimes group lost sight that an individual was speaking, and doing so with their personal story and perspective. We bloggers are not the complicated labels.

Out of all of this I have my own bit of labeled insight to share: People are too simple and incredibly complex to have complicated labels.