It is often very useful to appear non-committal, and thus keep one's options open. This applies to everyday commerce and office politics, to government policy and even international politics.
I have often wondered why we do not teach our children how to maintain an ambiguous stand as a matter of moral principle and education. Instead, we train them - or try to, anyway - to be moral absolutists. We want them to develop moral clarity in knowing right from wrong, as if that were as clear cut as telling right from left. We seem to have an instinctive moral urge to say: 'Never do this, always do that.'
I was led to think about this while reading about a controversy surrounding the cover story of National Geographic on the lost Gospel of Judas.
With much fanfare, it ran the story on the manuscript and its US$2 million project to restore and translate this 1,700-year-old text. But the organisation came under heavy criticism from some antiquities scholars, who said it should never have dealt with the long-secret gospel because of its questionable provenance. Doing so would encourage an underground - possibly illegal - trade in such antiques, they claimed.
The gospel's authenticity does not seem to be in serious doubt, although the issue of who owns it may be open to question. Because antiques dealers have been trading the ancient Gnostic text back and forth over several decades, it is deteriorating rapidly.
This prompts some questions: shouldn't National Geographic try to save it from permanent damage - and ask questions later? Does it make sense to say we must never, ever, deal with antiques of unclear provenance?
Groups and governments often declare absolutist, 'never' positions as the cornerstone of policies. Many governments have adopted the policy of never negotiating with terrorists, in the belief that doing so would encourage more terrorism. This is all very well, until their own citizens are kidnapped or greater geopolitical stakes are involved. Then you will see negotiations.
