You were supposed to be one of the good guys…
It’s a familiar feeling: that jarring moment when someone we admire reveals a belief that makes us recoil, makes a mistake that makes us cringe, or when they don’t support something that we believe to be aligned with their values. It takes us by surprise. We’re often shocked. And, we’re often more upset at them than those who have been espousing abhorrent beliefs because they were supposed to be one of the good ones. All of a sudden, that action or belief seems to wipe out years of rapport (or reputation, or brand…call it what you will). We go “cancel mode” on them.
Ironically, our reaction to the inverse situation - like when someone who has a reputation for being “evil” does something that we agree with - isn’t quite the same. It’s approached with skepticism and cynicism. For example, when Majorie Taylor Greene becoming the first Republican to cry genocide on the situation in Gaza or when Josh Hawley teamed up with Elizabeth Warren to tackle corporate greed, progressives weren’t exactly claiming them as heroes. They weren’t “uncancelled.”
Instead, what we find is that these moments expose our deep psychological need to sort people into neat categories of hero and villain - a cognitive shortcut that crumbles when confronted with human complexity.
Our brains evolved to make quick friend-or-foe assessments for survival, but this binary thinking often gets us into trouble in a more nuanced world. We fall victim to the halo effect, assuming someone good in one area must be good in all areas, then experience genuine betrayal when they disappoint us (social media amplifies this tendency, rewarding hot takes over nuanced positions and making it easier to dismiss entire people based on single positions). We demand perfection from public figures and those who we see as on our side while ignoring our own contradictions, creating a culture where one "wrong" opinion can erase years of good work - or where one admirable action from an opponent feels like a personal affront to our worldview. Maybe it’s them…but maybe it’s us too.
The uncomfortable reality is that people are collections of beliefs, experiences, and contradictions…just like us. The progressive leader who cozies up to corporations, the conservative politician who breaks ranks on a social issue - these aren't anomalies but they are everyday examples of normal human complexity. I often believe that we don’t always have different values, we have differences in interpretation of values and how they might be expressed in society, especially through policy. Trapping people into categories also doesn’t allow them to change - something that may encourage them to regress on bold new steps towards growth.
Learning to separate the person from individual positions, to support someone's good work while criticizing their harmful stances, requires the kind of intellectual maturity our world needs. It means building coalitions based on shared goals rather than shared identities, and recognizing that yesterday's opponent might be tomorrow's unexpected ally. Or that today’s disagreement isn’t necessarily enough to call down the armies of heaven to vanquish one of the good ones.
Moving beyond binary categories of good and bad doesn't mean abandoning our principles or embracing moral relativism. Instead, it means developing proportional responses that match the severity and scope of someone's actions, considering context and capacity for growth, and approaching others with curiosity rather than predetermined judgment. This framework allows us to hold multiple truths simultaneously: that someone can do tremendous good while holding views that we disagree with, that political opponents can occasionally be right, and that our own moral complexity mirrors what we see in others. In a world that rewards binary thinking, choosing nuance becomes a radical act - one that might actually help us solve problems rather than just win arguments.
