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On social media everyone is a hero or zero. We must embrace the complexity of real life

Ever had a bad idea? Or a bad thought? Or a bad friend? I imagine not, as you are here, where the good gather. I jest, though not much, because as the world gets ever more complex, one response is to retreat into reassuring binaries. Don’t worry: I am not going into the trans debate, as the meltdown that ensues means that multiple threats are sent my way from those who believe themselves to be “open-minded”.

I do want us all to be non-binary in how we think about the big issues, however. It was deeply saddening to see the abuse Malala Yousafzai got on social media last week because she is mates with a Tory. On Facebook she had endorsed a young woman who is standing for president of the Oxford Student Conservative Association. She said her friend was talented and this was not a personal reflection of her own political views.

This girl who was shot in the head by the Taliban was then savaged by social media vultures. Sickening, but of course every day some woman or other – and it is nearly always a woman – is brought down by the baying mob.

That this is done in the name of “socialism” disgusts me because idealistically I hold the acceptance of difference as being part of any socialism worth fighting for. The young Corbynite MPs who claimed they could never be friends with a Tory and were held up as champions of the working class were in fact champs of the own goal. If you cannot be friendly with someone who holds different political views from you, how exactly are you to persuade them to change their minds?

The world, we are told, is increasingly polarised. It is if you live on social media, where everyone is a hero or a zero. In real life, however, people are capable of holding opposing arguments in their heads at the same time. Non-binary. Left on some attitudes, right on others, don’t know on many. Freud was always better than Marx at understanding how we make up our minds. We make judgments that are often based on emotion, then reason backwards from that to justify them. The concept of “false consciousness” has hampered the left; banging people over the head with some absolute truth has evidently not fomented the revolution.

If ever there was a time when we can see both the interconnectedness and complexity of society, it is in this pandemic. The binaries of science v government, the economy v health, national v local government no longer hold up. “Covidiots” are often simply those who cannot afford to lose their livelihoods. What we tolerate shifts as the context shifts.

Identities based on “for us or against us” missed much over the past few years. Brexit as a form of identity and class politics shattered the left because it didn’t fit into the binaries it had held to be self-evident. Afterwards we were told it was a case of the young versus the old; the same with Corbyn’s defeat. So we just wait a few more years until the untainted youth who think all the correct things get into power? Seriously? Is it that simple?

Malala nearly died because she believes passionately in the education of girls. Education means embracing, not refusing, complexity. I know it’s counterintuitive in the days of Take Back Control and Hands Face Space to argue for uncertainty and complication, but there is no choice. The opposite, the discourse of certainty, is dangerous – murderous, fundamentalist, as Yousafzai knows, as we have just seen in France, where a teacher was beheaded after showing his pupils a caricature of Muhammad.

That this young woman can support someone who may have different political views is something life-enhancing. To quote Ursula K Le Guin: “I never knew anybody … who found life simple. I think a life or a time looks simple when you leave out the details.”

It is the details that are forever being left out in this age of righteous chatter. There are more ways to stop someone thinking than a bullet to the brain. If anyone knows this, it is Yousafzai. She can be friends with whoever she likes – and if your politics doesn’t allow for that, I feel sorry for you.