Life’s pretty complex. Profound statement, huh?

In thinking about many of today’s “hot”issues, Iusually am required by my job as a columnist and the Daily’s Opinion Page Editor to formulate some sort of educated opinion on what is going on in the world.

Unfortunately, as with many who speak out on issues, their own words can often be used against them simply because no matter what your stance is on a topic, rarely do you support your own position in absolutely every situation.

Let me explain.

I, like most people who are sane, oppose murder. However, there are several incidents I can think of in which I could accept murder as a necessity. Try hard, I’m sure you can think of a few scenarios on your own where you can understand why someone could commit what is normally considered a crime.

This “However” logic applies to almost every societal issue one can fathom.

The government should stay out of the affairs of business except when…

Abortion is morally wrong except in certain cases such as…

Stealing is wrong except in the following scenarios…

You should always tell the truth except when…

See what I mean? In almost every position one may take, there is the exception to the rule. Even my “exception to the rule” rule has an exception: try to find a justification for rape or child abuse.

So even a column on how nothing is ever 100 percent consistent except inconsistency is inconsistent in its premise of consistent inconsistency.

Existential enough for you?

I bring this topic up for two reasons: a selfish one, in that more and more I feel uncertain about my exact purpose as a columnist. And also, I feel compelled to comment on our growing, nasty habit of taking one event and applying it to an expansive issue.

For instance, the trend following the verdict in O.J. Simpson’s trial (I can’t believe those words are appearing in my column) is disturbing. It appears as though women are reluctant to report incidents of domestic violence because there is the apparent perception that the verdict of innocence for O.J. is some twisted vindication of domestic abuse.

This logic falls apart not only because O.J. was accused and found innocent of two counts of murder, not domestic abuse, but because events are events in and of themselves, and not a mosaic pattern of some larger, grander scheme.

High profile incidents are indeed indicative of our society. Names like “Rodney King,” “Reginald Denny,” “Yummy Sandifer,” “Susan Smith,””David Duke” and “O.J.” have been tossed around for the past few years as some sort of comment on a variety of issues as if the specific events were basic catch-all, encompassing headliners on issues that are often much more complex.

O.J. is not about domestic abuse. Reginald Denny and Rodney King are not about the frustrations people in a racially tense city, nation and world face. Yummy Sandifer is not about the growing crime problem among juveniles.

All of the incidents in which these people were involved indeed touch heavily on these topics of concern. But none of them are the end-all, be-all answer to what are some harsh, puzzling questions about how our society is malfunctioning in certain respects.

We do tend to simplify issues and attach posterboys to them because these issues are so complex and very few people seem to have some logical answers to some vital questions. We can deal with many issues on a case by case basis, but most attempts to locate the forest winds up with us pointing out specific trees, to be analogous.

Never take high profile events as the final verdict on an issue that is so much more complex and diverse than any one event can possibly contain. People are individuals, and their actions are individual in nature.

To ignore natural patterns in society is foolish in that you could begin to identify the remedy if you can locate the source of a problem. But to ignore that events are not part of one big grand scheme by some conspirator, and all we need to is attach a face and a slogan to it, is even more foolish.

Nothing’s as simple as it may appear. Life and its problems are more intricate than the labels we like to attach to them. Perhaps that is why we have such a hard time solving problems that have plagued mankind throughout history: We like apply little band-aids to each individual wound, rather than tackle the disease causing these scrapes and bruises.

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Tim Davis is a junior from Carlisle. He is the editor of the Opinion Page.