Every Generalization
3 min read
All generalizations are false.
That is a false sentence, and it carries its own contradiction.
Because if all generalizations are false, then this generalization, the generalization about generalizations, is true.
So some generalizations are true.
Generalizations matter, because they help us understand society, and the world we are thrown into. Conservatives tend to oppose abortion. Progressives tend to support immigration. Leftists are more willing to negotiate with enemies. Gay men have higher rates of HIV. Russians drink more vodka. Babies cry a lot. Turtles are slow.
Without generalizations, we would not understand the world. Every generalization flattens reality to some degree. It paints what exists in broad brushstrokes. It has no delicacy. But it can still be true, or at least true enough. All the generalizations I have written here are true.
The world is complex and tangled, and whoever tries to understand it is feeling their way through the dark. The darkness is vast, and the flashlight beam is narrow. Generalizations widen the beam, like a lever lifting the flashlight higher and higher, up toward a bird’s eye view. They are a necessary tool, and because of them, it is a little less dark here.
Words, too, are generalizations. In fact, every word is a kind of generalization. There are many kinds of leaves, and chairs, and music, but the word creates a model, a kind of private case study of a stone, or a guitar, or a cup, a visual image carved into the mind. It flattens and hides the enormous variety. It gathers a thousand different things into one single shape.
A word is an enclosure that presses different things into one generic form. This is the source of the inherent inaccuracy of language, and also of generalization. But it is also the source of their power: the power to make reality more precise, and to light another hidden layer of it into view.
So if you ever meet a leaf, know that you must not treat it like the flat, standardized leaf trapped inside the fence of the word leaf. Look at it. It is unique. Its colors are different. Its structure is different. It has already begun to wither in a way that never appeared in the leaf that rose in your mind when you read the beginning of this paragraph.
So if you ever meet a leftist, or a conservative, or a progressive, or a secular person, or an alcoholic, or a rabbit, or a cobra fish, know that you must not treat them like the generalization above, standardized and flat, living inside a fence. Look at them. They are unique. Listen to them. Approach them with questions, because standing before you is an experiencer, not a statistical average.
Every word sacrifices the particular for the general. Every generalization sacrifices the particular for the general. Both sacrifice precision in exchange for another beam of light. Through them, we draw the world.
