It’s a big world out there, full of lots and lots of people. Not that it’s useful to mention that, but it’s true, as far as we know. Also true, but less widely mooted, is the fact that, in all honesty, you’ll never really understand the world.

No, really, it’s not a problem with you, per se, but rather it’s a question of numbers. With more than 6 billion individual souls at large on the planet, it’s little wonder that we cannot help but be hopelessly myopic in our viewpoints, being able to see only as far as our city, our street, our household.

But the need for coherence sometimes gets the better of some of us; in order to develop a stable, reliable world picture, we’re required to deal in overarching assumptions, gross generalizations, and summary judgements. Which works, at least in the sense that it provides us with a satisfying sense that we know what the hell is going on, sort of.

Yesterday, Jessa Crispin of the Bookslut Blog posted a link to an essay by Kathleen Parker (writer of the book, Save the Males) as well as a link to an earlier review of a book called The Broken American Male. And in a way, these books both kind of illustrate this point.

If anything, they belong to a subset of non-fiction books in which an author, struggling to make sense of the world, suddenly discovers that old stereotypes seem to offer long sought-after explanations. Of course! their books say. Of course, pat, simple, widely held stereotypes are the key to understanding our society’s problems! I must tell everyone!

The problem is, of course, that intellectual honesty requires the acknowledgement of individual variation — which interrupts the even flow of our explanatory notions. Americans are fat — except for the ones that aren’t; Iraqis will welcome us as liberators — except for the ones that won’t; the Chinese crave western products like Levis and Snapple — except for the ones that don’t.

I can’t speak to the individual neuroses of the authors involved, except to say that they’ve fallen in love with the explanatory come-ons that broad stereotyping seems to offer. But it’s too easy; easy because one doesn’t have to reconcile one’s theory with the facts — you just pick the facts you like, and keep on believing.

When they buy into false promise of grotesque generalization, they are marginalizing, avoiding, or writing-off statistically significant portions of whatever group it is they’re looking at. Phrases like "most men", "most women", generally are concerned with whatever it is the hypothetical majority is thinking, doing, or feeling — in spite of the fact that any action on the part of any non-zero minority of a demographic can have tremendous effects, given the right set of circumstances. Effects that people so focused on sweeping assertions will miss.

But, if we can’t simply rely on generalization and stereotyping to create mental models of the world, what is it that can take their place? I don’t know. We’ve scientists, and computers and things; maybe they can help us out?

Or, maybe we’ll never understand the world, properly.

(Image via Medium Large)