Somewhat of a half-baked thought, but people are often so confused by those who think and think a lot.
When one realizes the logical fallacies of society or of one's philosophy of existence, one must necessarily revise one's thinking.
To be confused by a person's ideological inconsistencies because they have changed their approach to life is to forget the complexity of the human mind.
People like Gaskell or Barthes (I'm helping a friend write about Barthes' work and she mentioned a similar kind of confusion that people have with him) are complex because they are thinking beings. They have a depth in what they see and feel and others cannot comprehend what they do or why they seem to contradict themselves because they cannot grasp the underlying reasoning behind it.
I think they are the ones that observe society and see it for its flaws and do what they can do revise, reform, or inform the world. They try to make what changes they can.
People have a hard time understanding this because complexity does not fit easily into defined boxes and there is a tendency to want to compartmentalize everything or to understand the trajectory of thinking.
Sometimes, I think that it is nigh impossible to understand people and then there are moments of clarity.
