Are You Ambivalent?

There are many interpretations for ambivalence, but this article deals with social ambivalence only.

Dictionary.com defines ambivalence as: uncertainty or fluctuation, esp. when caused by inability to make a choice or by a simultaneous desire to say or do two opposite or conflicting things; the coexistence of opposing attitudes or feelings, such as love and hate, toward a person, object, or idea.

The word ambivalence according to Merriam Webster is: simultaneous and contradictory attitudes or feelings (as attraction and repulsion) toward an object, person, or action. Dr Deborah Serani (2008), a psychologist from USA argues that ambivalence is a psychological disease and needs to be treated.

One may agree with the previous, and many other, definitions for different reasons and purposes behind ambivalent behaviour, however, the specific definition for ambivalence which can be applied to the purpose of this short article is feeling and thinking in one way and acting in another. More concretely, this article deals with social ambivalence in the 21st century not behaviour and feelings of individuals in their personal relationships.

The first time I heard the word ambivalence was in one of my lectures in the East Lancashire Institute of Higher Education. My tutor mentioned the word with caution and explained as having two faces. “It is very bad if somebody being told that he has two faces” he said, when he raised his head, as looking for any possible reaction, he saw one of my colleagues and I were glancing at each other with a meant smile. The tutor asked for the reason of our smile and I said that nowadays many people have two faces.

After that I observed many ambivalent individuals and thought about any possible reasons behind our sense of ambivalence and the source of that attitude. My first finding is that ambivalence is not a natural human attitude but we are forced to it by different cultural, legal political and civic bonds. Every day we meet different people with a forced smile on their lips, they are human beings and it is natural to have senses of love, hate, disgust, attraction and avoidance. However, they have to keep all these human senses under cover and place a forced smile in their place.

One of the main characteristics of this age is the vast campaigns for human rights and especially the rights of minorities and different groups such as women, homosexuals, bi-sexual, refugees and asylum seekers, black people and etc… The laws change fast and law enforcers have to apply the law, even if they are not really ready to accept or even understand the ethics or the moral value behind the introduction of that law. It can be argued that there is nothing wrong with this process, as it is neither practical not logical to persuade all the law enforcement subjects in order to introduce a new law. However, we have to acknowledge the reality that not everybody is totally happy with what they do and there is not a straight line dividing who supports the new law and who opposes, due to the ambivalent nature of our daily life.