Americans, being the hyper-individualists we are, are highly focused on the particular rather than the general. So if there’s one error we’re on guard against, it’s judging an individual based on some group to which he belongs. This lesson against generalization has been a consistent theme in virtually all media and schooling for as long as I’ve been alive, and the impact on Americans is ubiquitous. But one of Satan’s most popular ploys is to get people focusing so intently on avoiding one error, that they wander blithely into its opposite. And on this topic, he has been so successful that most Americans don’t even realize there is an opposite error.
To be fair, there is certainly some truth to the lesson, for if you are responsible for impartially judging an individual, then you ought to learn enough about him as an individual to make that judgment well. For example, if you are a judge presiding over a criminal case on behalf of God and country, then you are obligated to disregard generalizations and focus on the particulars so that you can give justice to the accused. Likewise, if you happen upon a man who has been beaten and left for dead on the side of the road, no generalization should inhibit you from offering him basic human care.
God’s Gift of Generalization
Nevertheless, God gave us inductive reasoning as a gift, and there are times when it is the right tool for the job. When you make personal judgments on your own behalf rather than rendering impartial judgment on behalf of another, then generalization can be incredibly useful. For example, if you’re weighing what neighborhood would be a safe place to raise a family, the demographics and statistics are very relevant to your interests. You don’t owe your presence to any particular neighborhood. And when you move, you don’t have the luxury of getting to know everyone on the block or in the building beforehand. Your judgment must rest on the kinds of people who live there and whether you like your odds of getting along with them.
But such personal judgments are only the tip of the iceberg. There are times when judging by generalizations is not just wisdom, but a moral obligation. Whenever one is responsible for large groups of people, he must consider the traits and dynamics of those groups and not just a few individuals within them. As finite creatures, no one can gain a personal understanding of every individual in a large population. Laws and policies designed to serve a multitude will fail if they are made without regard to who that multitude is.
That this was once common sense is evident in American history. As John Adams famously noted, “Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.” Though this may be an unkind generalization towards the godless, it has certainly proven true in the past century as Americans have become less moral and religious.
And this is hardly the only generalization baked into our government. For example, we require our voters to be at least 18 years of age based on the generalization that children are less responsible than adults. The existence of exceptions doesn’t matter because we’re dealing with a large population. The handful of precocious children who might vote well would not offset the far larger number of normal children who won’t. We bar felons from voting for similar reasons. Likewise, our Founders were wise enough to forbid women from voting based on sound generalizations, and the grim consequences of repealing that restriction should be apparent to us by now.
But we need not stop at historical common sense, for Scripture is also replete with examples of reasoning based on generalization. By inspiration of the Holy Spirit, Paul famously provides Titus with some unflattering generalizations about Cretans to help him successfully minister among them. James likewise generalizes about the rich being oppressors to instruct Christians on the silliness of favoring them within the congregation. And in the Old Testament, God often comments on the type of people the Israelites were in general when explaining what he’s doing among them. Clearly, God has commended the art of generalization to us as a good and useful gift.
An Obligation to Generalize
We reject this gift today because we fear an individual might end up wrongly painted with such broad brushes. If, for example, someone were to observe that one race has lower IQ than another or higher criminality on average, then certain members of that race could end up wrongly assumed to be dumb or criminal. If one observes that women tend to be emotional decision makers, then somewhere, a woman’s level-headed and rational decision could be discarded out of hand. Might we therefore be better off locking up such a dangerous tool so that nobody is unjustly harmed by it?
The problem with shying away from generalization goes deeper than neglecting a useful tool, though. There are certain God-given vocations which cannot be fulfilled without it. Whenever someone is put in a position of authority, he must either generalize or govern unjustly. He might avoid the harm of unfair generalizations if he neglects them altogether, but without them he will inevitably inflict greater harm on the people in his care.
For examples, one need not look further than the fruits of the civil rights era which was founded on this deliberate neglect. The most obvious of these are how we govern men and women. For the sake of our false presumption of equality, we rejected any and all generalizations about the sexes as sexist stereotypes. This decision produced nothing but misery, but for the sake of brevity, let us consider only one such example: the so-called wage gap.
If we use all the mental tools at our disposal, we quickly find that this gap is entirely a product of generalized differences between how men and women approach employment (hours worked, preferred fields, parental leave, etc.) However, if one refuses to use that part of his brain, the only remaining explanation is systematic unfairness towards women in the workforce or in society. For this, we naturally blame men as we presume women wouldn’t exploit themselves without male interference.
So a refusal to generalize leads immediately to false witness, which is evil on its own. But that harm is magnified when a ruler bases policy on this false witness. In order to close this natural gap, our institutions have shown sinful partiality towards women through DEI to “compensate.” They presume that men are “overrepresented” in STEM fields and create a multitude of programs to steer women into work for which they are generally disinclined and ill-equipped. They relax physical standards in military and emergency services so we can pretend women are just as physically qualified as men. As a result, our entire society is ordered to discourage women from their God-ordained work of bearing children and tending to the home.
Governing Tribes and Nations
But this doesn’t just stop at the fruits of feminism. These dynamics also exist when it comes to immigration and race relations in the US. For individuals, it is all well and good to judge a man by the content of his character. Racial differences are hardly insurmountable between two people. At this point, most Americans have learned to get along fine with men of other races as friends, coworkers, and so forth in the ordinary course of life.
Nevertheless, managing great multitudes of men is another matter, for national character eclipses personal character when we move to questions of national policy. Despite the mantras Boomers learned from television, diversity has lead more and more people to notice that race goes far deeper than skin color.
This should come as no surprise when you consider the very different societies and civilizations that the world’s tribes and nations have produced to accommodate not only their circumstances, but also their own inclinations, preferences, and capabilities. Some foolishly believe the modern age has miraculously erased these differences. Nevertheless, evidence to the contrary abounds among those willing to notice phenomena like the voting patterns of different demographics, how much “disparate impact” occurs while enforcing basic laws, the causes of modern riots, and so forth.
The long and short of it is that different tribes and nations aren’t necessarily going to get along smoothly under the same set of laws and policies. Some groups will find certain policies more beneficial or more problematic than others. The increasing unrest in the West caused by diversity should put this beyond question.
Nevertheless, as with feminism, men who refused to generalize blamed all disparities on the “sins” of racism and white privilege. As with feminism, we founded this false witness on nothing more than a presumption of interchangeability between any and every tribe on Earth. We likewise tried to address the matter with an endless variety of DEI programs that did nothing to change outcomes for the better, but did much to foster hatred against the American posterity for whom our Constitution was written. One could certainly debate why different ethnicities have such different outcomes in the United States. However, the very fact that our common policies have resulted in such wide differences no matter what accommodations we experiment with should be instructive.
A Mob of Rulers
But is this an issue for most ordinary people? Maybe negligence and injustice are inevitable for a ruler who doesn’t generalize. How many of us rule anything at all, though?
Here, democracy throws us a curveball. Universal suffrage has made almost every adult in the West a very peculiar kind of ruler. Because we each represent one tiny vote among millions, our executive authority is virtually non-existent. Nevertheless, the scope of our tiny authority is extremely wide as our votes help choose the highest offices in the land. And we are expected to base our votes on how we think the candidates intend to rule. While one may doubt the merits of the democratic arrangement, the current reality is that on matters of national policy, virtually all Americans are rulers. We all therefore have a moral obligation to generalize when appropriate.
It therefore behooves us to learn to govern well and therefore to generalize well. For starters, that requires us to disregard those who would manipulate us into confusing the general for the particular. Our immigration policy shouldn’t be decided based on a picture of a crying child or distraught mother. Instead, we ought to consider what is best for the American people and to what extent we can actually afford to be generous to others. The place of women in society shouldn’t be settled by the quirky talents of your Great Aunt Mabel, but by God’s design and the wisdom of history. General policy shouldn’t be determined by the exceptions, but by the norms.
We likewise need to rebuke those who call it a sin to generalize. However much the prophets of the Spirit of the Age may bristle, we have bigger concerns than their made-up rules. We shouldn’t be too concerned about whether we’ve expressed a stereotype. Better questions are whether that stereotype is true or whether we’re improperly using it as a shortcut when judging an individual. We must also reject the phony moral obligation to cram all tribes together under a single government and instead learn how to build good fences which will make good neighbors. Against such things, God has given us no laws. But the extent to which the Church has aped the world’s foolishness and declared new sins should appall any Christian.
But what then shall we do for victims of unfair generalizations? Keeping the general and the particular consistently straight may well be more than we can expect from the average person. Reopening this door may therefore cause some harm. But if this is the case, it is an argument against democracy and globalism, not against making generalizations.
Since generalizations must be made, let’s make them easier to parse and not give the responsibility to everyone. The best defense we have against unfair generalization in day-to-day life is to live among our own people who understand us best. Likewise, the best way to protect others is to encourage those others to do the same. When different tribes and nations govern themselves, they are freed to do so in ways that work best for them. When they must interact, let it be a matter of foreign policy resting on those who are well-equipped to such a task.
To this end, we would do well to encourage borders–both on maps and in societies–rather than working feverishly to erase them. If we focus on building up our own nations and honor other tribes who do the same, we may find it easier to recover the lost art of generalization and understand it as a blessing rather than a curse.
