I had the "nothing is black and white, everything is shades of grey" argument at work today. I like having that argument, because I always win. It's really not all that hard either. Just ask the other person what you have to mix to get grey. The only correct answer is "Black and White." If you mix red and white you get shades of pink. Simple logic dictates that in order to have shades of grey, and the ends of the spectrum, you must have black and white.

Once you get them to agree to that the argument is over. they have to acknowledge that in a given situation or choice there are some things that are black and some things that are white, and that the mixing of those creates a shade of grey.

If they don't get it - and a surprising number of people don't, hit them with a simple analogy to make the point. I like the hemlock dilemma.

On the table in front of you are three glasses. In the glass on the left pure clean life sustaining water. The center glass is empty. The glass on the right contains hemlock. You must drink one full glass of liquid. You can drink the glass of water (white), drink the glass of hemlock (black) or mix part of each in the center glass (grey) What do you do?

Posted by: Stephen Macklin at 04:29 PM | No Comments | Add Comment