Black or White: The Death of Nuance

Black or White: The Death of Nuance

16 September 2025

Shades of grey are disappearing. On my way home from a meeting about the Future of Work and AI, I realized how deeply this divide runs. Later that evening, a Dutch talk show drove the point home: truth itself is under siege. The political scientist Raymond Mens was one to address this issue.

The story was familiar. Ted Turner turned CNN into a news business. Fox, of Murdoch,  followed with a conservative twist. The result? Two Americas, split down the middle. Add to the mix the proliferation of social media. Two narratives: one liberal, one conservative. Black and white. No middle ground. And in such a climate, violence and extremism no longer surprise us—they are almost inevitable. Counties like Venezuela, the Netherlands, and Curaçao followed a different road but ended in the same place.

The same dynamic plays out with AI. One camp is intoxicated by its promise: efficiency, productivity, innovation. The other camp raises alarms about job loss, surveillance, bias, and existential risk. But here’s the problem—raising concerns gets you labeled a pessimist, a “black cloud” blocking the sunshine. The fanboys don’t want dissent. The critics don’t want optimism. Again, black or white.

We’ve lost the ability to deal with nuance. Multiple truths, multiple futures, competing scenarios—these require patience, humility, and dialogue. Instead, society splits into tribes, each canceling the other.

Reality, however, is messy. The future is uncertain. Refusing to acknowledge complexity doesn’t make it go away—it makes us blind. Black-and-white thinking may feel comforting in a chaotic world, but it is also dangerous. Progress will not come from denial or despair, but from wrestling with the uncomfortable shades of grey that still exist—whether we admit it or not.

We warmly invite you to join the dialogue by participating in the Future of Work conference, organized by the SER Curaçao. You can register via the link on their website: SER.cw.

Miguel Goede