For Example,
I’ve been thinking about how much I rely on examples for both functions of communication: comprehension and expression. I appreciate having examples to understand, but I fear using example to express. As I become more conscious of how I engage examples in communication, my relationship with them becomes more akin to “reverence”. Examples are powerful communication tools.
To approach this post about examples, I will be providing examples of good examples, bad examples, etc. Lest I spend the next 5 years trying to consolidate the most appropriate examples for each category, I’ll try not to be so hard on myself for not providing the best (or worst) examples. I hope that you, Reader, will afford me the same mercy.
A good example makes the argument.
Consider The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), activists who were known for advocating social change through the U.S. Supreme Court (read: judicial activism) in the 1950-60’s. The NAACP had to look for the right plaintiff to challenge what they considered unjust/unconstitutional laws; in other words, a tangible example of injustice.
Rosa Parks was ultimately the best known example of challenging segregation on buses. However, bus segregation could have arguably been addressed nine months earlier by Claudette Colvin who performed an identical act of civil disobedience. Why was Parks successful and Colvin not? Colvin was a pregnant teenager; whereas Parks was married, educated, working as a secretary, and already an activist.
Similarly, Rev. Oliver Brown in the Brown v. Education landmark case was a the right plaintiff at the right time to challenge race-segregated schools. Brown was a pastor and railway welder. Both Parks and Brown were the right plaintiffs, the best examples, to challenge the state because they were morally upright citizens who were otherwise in good standing with their community.
Notice that the plaintiffs with the most potential to advance NAACP’s agenda were African Americans who were well-adapted to American culture and values. They are good examples to the judicial system because it’s clear that these are model Americans who embody American values that are being hindered by American laws. Claudette Colvin had one too many strikes against her to be considered a good example (aka an exemplary American). The stakes were too high to risk a flawed example.
Example is where theory meets practice. A good example animates a claim. And, in this case, a good example sets precedence. Good use of example can be the starting point for which theory inspires action.
A bad example breaks an argument.
On another note, what makes me fear example is that not only does a bad example add nothing to the argument I am making, it a bad example detracts from my argument.
When a listener/reader encounters a predictable example, by hearing the same contrived stories over and over again, they assume they already have a good grasp on the idea and need not know more. Consider examples for the effects of climate change. The plight of the polar bear has been invoked so often that it has become the mascot for the climate change. Consider examples of racism against Asian Americans (of which I am one). Now, it’s not my intention downplay a real experience of marginalization, but being asked “Where do you come from?” is such a cliché example of a microaggression that the cliché-ness of hearing it used as an example is more triggering to me than the question itself. These one-dimensional examples are not just easy to write-off, they don’t do justice to the multitude of other dimensions the idea calls into question [1]. When polar bears come to be the sole imagined stakeholder of climate change, we fail to see climate change as a social justice issue. When individual instances of ignorance are the only examples we call out as racism, we don’t see the financial, health, etc. burden that systemic racism puts on people. Just as there are high stakes for using good examples, the stakes are just as high for avoiding lazy examples.
Arguably more sinister than poor communication, poor examples can collapse the latent potential of theory into dogmatic practice. Consider political imagination. As I’m learning in the urban geography course I am taking notes in, not having enough affordable housing is a pretty common urban problem. The exemplary solution to this problem is to build vertically. “Density, Density, Density“, they’d say. And so we plop super-high-rises wherever we can (namely, by displacing impoverished or marginalized locals). Yet if hyper-density via condos becomes the only example we can imagine as a solution to our housing problems, we’d lose public spaces, diversity in residents (class, age etc), and diversity in businesses (small businesses in the vicinity of new condo developments get exorbitant commercial tax increases and essentially replaced by well-established franchises that can afford these expenses)… not to mention, housing would still be unaffordable. To be fair, I have no authority to talk about this issue let alone offer better examples, but the main point here is that an overused example may be misunderstood as the only example that addresses the idea. As they say, it’s easier to imagine the end of the world than to imagine the end of capitalism.
For a more personal example, let’s consider some anecdotes I hear in sermons at church. A common idea that preachers like to illustrate is “listening to God’s call“. A common example application of this idea would follow a certain formula: “Something (read: Someone) in Person A’s heart nudged her to talk to Person B. Person A was obedient to The Nudge and talked to Person B. Because Person A ‘listened to God’s call’ to approach Person B, she was able to evangelize to Person B. Person B’s soul was saved as a result.” The scenario would be slightly different every time. Person A and Person B could be on the bus, on a missions trip, at work, or it could have been a series of coincidences. The scenario could be more drawn out: Person A could have been one cog in the eventual conversion of Person B. Perhaps Person A is an introvert but still managed to be part of Person B’s conversion because of her ~Christian integrity~. Heck, the sermon topic could have been “listening to God’s call“, or it could very well have been “loving your neighbour“, or even something more “subversive” like “radically counter-cultural generosity“. Again, the point here is that when the punch line of every example and the moral of every story is the same (ie. saving people from hell lol), our capacity to imagine how to put theory (ie. faith) into practice (ie. Christ-following) is stifled, and we fail to recognize the legitimacy of alternative expressions of praxis (ie. have you ever heard a sermon about divestment from fossil fuels as a responsibility of a person of faith?).
PROTIP: Not using an example at all is better than using a bad example.
[1] There is definitely a temporal element to the lifetime of a good example. Polar bears may have been a great example of the effects of climate change years ago, but it’s just not sufficient anymore. Bringing to awareness the racial implications of the “Where did you come from?” question may have been mind-blowing at first, but now it’s trite. We probably outgrow our examples, and that’s probably for the better.
Examples are not neutral.
Examples can be good or bad, but as with any tool or technology, “its effects are not neutral“.
If the “goodness” of an example is measured by its ability to communicate an idea, then it also relies on its impact on the recipient. Recall that the plaintiffs with the most potential to advance NAACP’s agenda were African Americans who happen to be well-adapted to American culture and values. They were “good” examples because the NAACP was expressing their thoughts to White, American men. However, by using them as an example they are perpetuating and modelling the characteristics of Brown and Parks that were not explicitly called into question. See, an effective example-maker understands the “controlled variables”, “independent variables, and “dependent variables”. The NAACP controlled the “exemplary Americanness” variable when they chose Parks as an appropriate plaintiff over Colvin. Even though these characteristics were not the primary focus of the case, the argument is augmented by using a plaintiff that is, withstanding her Blackness (aka the “dependent variable”), in line with American values.
Whereas the NAACP had to suck up to the U.S. Supreme Court using value-laden examples of “model American citizenship” as a strategy, the Nobel Prize committee incentivizes a value-laden version “model world citizenship” by awarding examples of it. Instances where a person from an non-Western country receives the Nobel Prize, doubles as a gesture, encouraging the countrymen of the award-recipient to strive for their highest (read: democratic) potential. Instances where a person of colour receives the Nobel Prize, it double as subliminal message, “see, there are examples of people who look like you who succeed in ways that we approve of”. (Oh, the hubris it takes to masquerade opinions that come from highly contentious historical and cultural legacies under the authority of “universal and timeless reasonableness”.) Now, I am by no means saying that the values of the Nobel Prize committee is necessarily bad by virtue of their subjectivity, nor am I even suggesting that we try harder to be objective. I just think it’s important to recognize that if our values are any different, the examples we use would also be different.
Now, back to my pet-peeve: church rhetoric. Consider a small group fellowship meeting where the leader asks you to contemplate, “Is God REALLY your #1 priority?” Now, “God” is more of a placeholder for that which we have no language for than some sort of entity; I (finite) cannot contemplate “God” (infinite), let alone “God” in relation to something as concrete as “my priorities”. So instead, I reduce “where God is my priority” into a collection of concrete mental images that address the idea. And where else does my mind’s eye go when I try to visualize “God as my #1 priority”?–Sermon anecdotes. Sermon examples are where abstract, lofty platitudes are shown to be manifest in daily human life [1]. And so, the Evangelical Church perpetuates narratives of colonialism and conquest through their stories of exemplary missionaries who risked it all, by “praising God” when we’ve “won people over”. The Chinese Church perpetuates the collision of cultural and faith values when we equate cultural ideas like “saving face” with religious ideas like purity (avoiding drugs, tattoo, being friends with people who do drugs and have tattoos that are “bad influences”). We use example to make our point in a certain domain, but they expose our unspoken values and/or downright ignorance in other domains.
[1] Some examples of exemplary Christianity I hear at church: bringing up faith in a conversation, not getting angry during our commute to work, tithing, being a worker of great integrity [2]. By these examples, one can only imagine a certain caricature of what a Christian ought to be. These are not necessarily bad examples of what it might look like to be a Christian, but by trying too hard to be relevant to the “average” American, I think we lose out on recognizing the full potential of our faith? I mean, Bonhoeffer contemplated murdering Hitler arguably because God was his #1 priority, he contemplated suicide because he was afraid he would reveal intelligence if tortured in prison arguably because God was his #1 priority.
[2] “Be a good worker” also happens to be pretty good example of the mixing of Chinese values and Christian values. In our homes, this is indoctrinated from young (hence the “model minority” stereotype). From the pulpit, they tell us that though we might be introverts, if we act integritably, people will ask you why you are so moral and then you can tell them it’s because you have Jesus in your heart~
Examples reveal. Examples are very personal, local, and particular. My use of example shows you how I engage with a concept. It shows you what matters to me, what my mind comes up with instinctively, what resonates with me. I find myself refusing to provide examples when people demand them because it makes me vulnerable; my examples show you how simplistically I think, how little I actually know. I am also afraid to give examples because a bad one might simplify and cheapen an idea I find meaningful, leaving me vulnerable in a different kind of way.
Yet I recognize that I have benefited immensely when others used examples appropriately. My own thoughts and opinions have been formed by others’ nuanced, comprehensive, convincing use of example in the first place. So when you ask me for an example for some idealistic statement I am making, I will try to take the risk and give you one … but maybe only after pointing you to this post as a disclaimer :P.
Featured photo was taken in Jökulsárlón, Iceland, 2017.