False Dualities

I truly believe the single biggest obstacle to human flourishing is our tendency toward binary thinking. Binary thinking leads us to say “either it’s this or it’s that.”In fact, I propose there are few questions that can be answered with a simple “yes” or “no,” and the ones that can be thus answered are usually either (A) too simplistic to be of much value or (B) seemingly impossible to answer—in other words, the “wrong” question.

[In the hope of avoiding infinite regress or, you know, a breach in the fabric of this universe, I’ll assume there is no single “right” question for any given dilemma]

Morality

There’s one area where coherent thinking seems to require binary thinking, and that’s morality. Surely we need to find clear up-or-down frames for questions like murder, sexual assault, and bigotry—to name a few of the most prominent. But is it really that easy?

I say rarely. Maybe never. If I am grappling with someone intent on killing me, am I wrong if I kill them first? If a severely developmentally delayed person gropes me, are they guilty of assault? If someone who has never seen and has only heard negative things about a certain type of person holds only negative views, are they morally wrong for doing so? We have the distinction of “ignorant” which some use in place of “racist” for such folks.

I do believe that moral answers are possible in nearly every specific situation, but finding rules that cover all scenarios is notoriously messy.

Other Stuff

Those were higher stakes moral questions, but what about more academic or complex policy matters? What about how a U.S. President should do his job?

A very old example which also sort of shaped a lot of my early thinking about social issues posed the question: Nature or Nurture? To me the answer is obviously both, and we forgot to include individual Will.

Here’s another one which, having wrestling with it, in a lot of ways led me to be the person I am now: “Is this a matter of the heart or of the head?” I answer that one first with another question—What makes you need to choose? Even the most logical formulations (absent mathematics, which the most gifted practitioners often find to be incredibly moving) betray value judgments or even instincts at their most fundamental levels of organization. And ask any therapist. The emotions we navigate every day are probably even more about what we think about the feeling than the raw emotion itself. Alter your thinking, and voila! The emotion shifts.

Lastly, and maybe you saw this coming, is the binary that controls political reality in this country. For years, I said I was “somewhere in the middle.” Why? Because I heard conservative and liberal people both make interesting points. And I saw rigidity in the thinking of both camps. I saw over-simplification. My own frame of reference matters. I’d been attracted to things like theater, literature and human psychology because I believed humans were infinitely complex—or at least we made things that way. I’d loved science and human evolution from an even earlier age cause I was fascinated by the idea that something deeper and more fundamental was happening instead of the silly things I saw people doing every day. I digress.

I Guess This is About Me After All

Eventually I accepted that what I’d considered the simplistic frameworks defining politics WERE the deal. This was how the humans in my time and place were organizing to self-govern. There was no escaping it. Since I cared so much about especially the most vulnerable among us, I should pick a side.

It wasn’t hard. I’d always trusted, sympathized and agreed with the things liberals said way more than conservatives. So I picked. I picked and I went to work, but I continued to notice that the other side made interesting points or behaved in understandable ways. And, I noticed the other workers on my side were having none of that.

Maybe “polarization” is our destiny, in this particular time and place. Maybe the comfort of reducing things to simple either-or formulations is irresistible. Maybe millions of years of biological evolution trumps a few thousand years of cultural evolution any day. Maybe the Right in America, by pulling the more deeply rooted moral levers of “right” and “wrong” have made it functionally impossible for the Left to sit back anymore and consider the complexities.

Maybe we can’t afford to.

I do now believe there is no reversal of our course toward cultural collision, implosion, dissolution—take your pick—on our present trajectory. We don’t have a unified sense any more of what it means to be American. One day, lots of people will die because of that.

Maybe I hold foolishly to the idea that most people act in good faith most of the time—they are the good guys in their own storyline. Maybe it’s too easy for me to find the merit in even terrible ideas, all because I want to understand why so many people choose them. Maybe I’m too quick to assign wisdom and intelligence to other people, because the alternative—that the world is full of billions upon billions of imbeciles—is a little too much for me to bear.

For now, I remain the lonely cheerleader of humanity that I seem to be.

Well you made it this far. I write things like this, sometimes integrating personal stories and experiences, because I want to know what other people think. I want to co-evolve with you, learn from you. What do you think?