I generally dislike generalities

The nature of my prejudice is so advanced that I often dismiss them straight off the bat without giving them a chance to prove to me that they are the exception that proves the rule. Generalities do have their uses sometimes and I suppose that discounting them off hand undermines my sensibility at times.

However, having observed Internet and media discussions recently, I’ve become disheartened by the desire to seek generalities in regard to human relations. In particular questions like “Are co-ed schools or single sex schools better for <insert gender>?” or “Why do women do XYZ.”

Sometimes these questions are in jest and poke some intelligent fun at the disconnect between different groups in society. Often I’m worried that these questions are asked in serious earnest, as if there is an arithmetic to human behaviour that one can coldly apply to a subject given a similar set of circumstances.

As someone who dislikes being but into a figurative box, often reading these questions being posed by people who do not appreciate the same, the contradiction is bemusing, and sometimes a little worrying.

Sometimes the question needs to be “Does my child with these needs more fit this school or this school?” or “Given this context and this personality, why did she do this?”

There’s a need out there to become more familiar with the unique variable of each person’s nature, a need to understand how individual the answers to such issues tend to be.

Many answers to questions of our human interaction are best answered generally with a ‘depends’. We should never lose that word from the back of our minds, lest we become the designer of the kind of box we dislike others confining us in.