“There’s a Fine Line…” — No, there isn’t

People use the expression “there’s a fine line between x and y” to describe a difficulty in distinguishing between x (some acceptable or desirable activity) and y (an unacceptable or undesirable activity that has much in common with x). A topical example would be “there’s a fine line between freedom of expression and hate speech”.

But is there really a fine line?

To me, the line symbolizes a distinction — there is some defining property of x that y lacks (or vice versa) — and the fine line symbolizes a distinction that requires wisdom or acumen to discern. It suggests that, if we look carefully enough, we can differentiate between x and y — and the people who trespass that boundary are the ones incapable of that degree of care.

But what if there wasn’t a defining property? What if that was the reason it wasn’t easy to distinguish between them? Where some would see an action as x, while others see the same action as y, because they interpret it from different worldviews, values or ethical frameworks?

So instead of a precise, fine, line, what we really have is a broad, fuzzy boundary? Outside the gray area, we can easily define examples (e.g. of “free speech that isn’t hate speech” and “hate speech”) that everyone agrees with — but that doesn’t mean it’s possible to do so in the gray area.

This doesn’t mean that we can’t have debates on ethics, or a tug-of-war where we try to convince people to join “our side”, but we could do so without postulating some imaginary line.

You may also be interested in my other writing on Education, Politics/Power, Ethics/Philosophy/Humanism, Parenting and “Lost in Translation”