Nuance is not “weakness” in the face of power; it is the vital nutrient that keeps the institutional “immune system” strong enough to resist the urge for a “king.”

I can well imagine that the title “Nuance as Chemotherapy” may startle you and make you wonder what has possessed me. Of course, this is a metaphor, and there is no absolute truth in drawing a bridge between medical science and ‘nuance’ as a means to irradiate conflicts.

Still, this image may put you on the wrong foot. You should not take this literally: the supposed causal link between verbal conflict and deadly disease has never been proven. I state it pointedly to take a stand in efforts to protect the social fabric of a society against brusque, targeted attacks on the harmony of the whole—attacks that, like a deadly seed of uncontrolled growth, can undermine its survival. With this comparison, my aim is above all to illustrate the urgency and importance of nuance—not to downplay or dramatize medical processes, but to clarify how essential it is to handle our words and disagreements with care.

In this context, nuance can still offer some solace. Under the motto “prevention is better than cure,” nuance is a gentle force: it acts preventively, keeps the chemical processes of exclusion anxiety in check, and prevents fear from becoming the guiding principle of behavior. For as soon as fear becomes the driving force, fueled by dopamine or other impulses, numbness of the mind increases. Precisely at that moment of hardening, an external threat can finish the job and destroy the fabric.

When nuance is only brought in at a late stage of numbness, it becomes harsh, like chemotherapy: aimed at recovery and preservation but also with a destructive effect, sometimes even requiring the amputation of parts. The moral? Just as smoking destroys more than you would like, so too do unbridled words and one-liners, arising from exclusion anxiety, cause more damage than you might wish. Nuance as a gentle force can prevent this, but if it comes too late, only the harsh therapy remains, which merely slows what has already gone too far.