Monthly Archives: December 2021
Shocking Human Behavioral Trends in Times of Crisis
TW: Descriptions of pain/injury
The world runs differently in times of crisis. Whenever there is a real or interpreted threat, physical, mental, biological, or social, we act in ways that we never thought we would. We go through these changes in behavior in ways that we don’t even notice sometimes, and this kind of behavior can make a negative situation become a dire one. We often find reasons to turn on people we love over the smallest things and act in ways that we would never dream of under normal circumstances.
This phenomenon has been studied by various sociologists throughout the years. To note are the Stanford Prison Experiment by Philip Zimbardo in 1971 and the Electric Shock Experiment by Stanley Milgram in 1963. The prison experiment lasted less than a week because the participants began behaving in such alarming ways. They engineered a fake prison with willing participants where half were prison guards and the other half were prisoners. They mimicked the prison experience exactly, and the people in the study began to think they were actually in prison. The prisoners would be at the mercy of the guards, and they began to only think of getting out. They could have opted out at any time, but they did not. This behavior on the part of the “guards” and the “prisoners” was so alarming that they ended the experiment after just less than a week. The write-up done by Zimbardo on his findings had the conclusion that humans’ actions are not always necessarily in their full control. We are all responding to situations we find ourselves in, and this calls for certain actions. Sometimes the actions we perform are not always what we would predict ourselves doing in that situation. Much the same was found years earlier in the electric shock experiment by Milgram. Milgram wanted to know how so many soldiers in WWII did such terrible things that they knew were wrong without leaving service. He engineered an experiment in which average people were put in a room with a shock button and a wall between them and a human subject. There was a person in a lab coat in the room with the person who would instruct them to deliver increasingly high voltage shocks to the unknown and unseen person on the other side of the thin wall. The person delivering the shocks did not know that the receiver was a paid actor who would scream after the button was pushed in increasingly more painful expressions until eventually they fell silent; “dead.” The people delivering the shocks they thought could be deadly were upset and wanted to stop at some point, but they did not do so because the person in a lab coat – a figure of authority – said to continue. Some of the men delivering the shocks broke down crying while continuing to push the button as instructed.
Now, in retrospect, these experiments must have been extremely hard on the participants’ mental health, but the results truly are remarkable and intriguing. In both of these instances, the participants showed drastic changes in behavior than they would in any normal situation. Both the prisoners in Zimbardo’s experiment and the shockers in Milgram’s experiment submitted to the people in positions of supposed authority: the guards and the people in lab coats. Some of the prison guards became the cruel ones we see on television, and the others became the secretly nice person who the prisoners couldn’t risk trusting, even when they had histories of good behaviors as students and friends. None of the participants predicted this kind of behavior, and they were probably either shocked or angry at themselves afterward for a long while for displaying these actions.
So, the people in Zimbardo’s experiment knew that it was a behavioral experiment, and they still acted in ways that real prison personnel act. Their actions were not corrected, obviously, because that would defeat the purpose of the experiment. They were allowed to act in any way that they wanted, and they still acted in prisoner/guard behavioral patterns. Now, compare this to Milgram’s experiment; the participants did not know during the experiment that the person receiving the shocks was not actually being harmed. They did not see the person. They simply listened to the person in the lab coat. Everything inside them told them to stop, but they chose to ignore that shouting in order to follow orders. Now, put these people in a situation where they have a gun and are told to shoot whoever walks through that door or else they would be physically harmed or killed. You can probably understand that most people wouldn’t hesitate to pull the trigger.
In times of crisis, our behaviors and thought processes change. We can betray those we love, we can murder countless strangers, but we almost always make sure to follow the orders of people in authority. Does this come from fear, selfishness, socialization, or instinct? There really isn’t an answer, or there are too many to count, depending on how you look at it. In the prison experiment, the participants could opt out at any time and had the freedom to choose their actions, yet they acted in these ways because it was how the power structure was organized. The guards were in positions of authority in relation to the prisoners, so the prisoners submitted to them. In the shock experiment, they acted under the will of the person in a lab coat. They ignored everything in them telling them that they should turn around and walk out, but we cannot understand if it was fear of what would happen if they didn’t listen or if it was how the person was brought up – to obey authority. In the case of WWII Nazi soldiers, we can assume that there was an element of fear to it, but they had guns too. Why didn’t they just turn on the authority figures threatening violence before they could hurt innocent people?
People who go into the military are strictly resocialized. They are trained to listen only to the person that is in charge on their side. They are punished if they do not do as they are told. They are to ignore all their previous knowledge, and only carry with them into battle the mental and physical tools that their superiors have provided them. Socialization is how people learn from birth the correct ways to act in their culture. Resocialization occurs when you make a large cultural change such as moving to a different country or entering the military. The consequences of ignoring the social norms and expectations in these situations can be social/emotional as in the case of immigration, or they can be physical/mental in the case of the military.
In times of crisis, the same kinds of changes happen in our minds. We begin to think only of getting through the situation, no matter what it costs. People would act differently in a zombie apocalypse than they would in a grocery store. People act differently if they think they are being followed home at night. People act differently when there is a virus that is illustrated as the worst thing known to humankind, and it can be spread by anyone they love or come into contact with every day.
Humans are capable of many things. We are able to lift cars to save our children, but we don’t do it often because it would rip our bodies apart. We could revolt against our government, but we don’t do it often because we are taught from the age of ten that we would lose. We could overthrow an army that is commanding us to murder innocent children, but we would likely choose not to because we don’t want to get ourselves shot in the head. Think of all the things we could do, but we choose not to do them because of our instinct for self-preservation. We don’t want to die. A lot of people would rather live under the will of an unjust group of leaders who tell us exactly what to do and when to do it but never why than die because of those same people. And you may say you would never do that, but you really won’t know until you are put in that situation. We all think we are better than other people until we cave to the will of another because of our built-in reactions to the world around us. Behaviors can often shock us in times of real or implied crisis; COVID-19 is real, and the reactions to it are just as real but a thousand times more shocking when you compare it to our actions beforehand. People are rejecting their family members simply because of differences in opinion over vaccines. People are staying in the same house as their abuser more than ever because authority figures are telling them they have to. We are giving up our rights because the government says it is for the greater good and if we do it will end, but then they renegotiate again and again for the same “greater good.” What is the greater good exactly anyway?
It’s interesting the way humans work. All of us are unique, but we behave far too similarly across time and space for our uniqueness to be well-known for prevailing in tough situations. We often surprise ourselves with the similarities between our own actions and others’ in periods where our common instincts kick in. We are all born with the same primitive senses; some of us can overpower them. No one in either of these groups is more or less valuable than the others, but one group will likely be stronger in some situations than the other.
Until next time, keep thinking outside the box, and keep reading in between!
Personal Method of Fact- and Bias-Checking While Reading
If you are reading something online or even printed, such as a textbook, you need to make sure to separate the facts from the opinions. Once you separate the facts from the opinions, you can make your own conclusions about whatever you are reading about. This can sometimes be difficult to do when only looking at one source, however, so here is a method you can use to find the facts from the story and use them to come up with your own conclusion.
There are always going to be biases in writing and media. It is inescapable. Even in my own writing you may find unintentional biases in it, or things that sound like they are biased. However, we can fix the issue of the spread of unconscious biases by being conscious of them while we learn in our daily lives.
A good method for fact-checking is to look at multiple sources by different authors on the same topic. Try to get at least four sources together that were written by different people with different backgrounds, platforms, and probably genders. They can include academic writing, blogs, websites, books, videos, or podcasts. Then, watch, read, or listen to all of them and on a piece of paper or on a note app write all the statements that you would take as fact. If the statement or claim is supported with tangible evidence such as a formal study, make sure to take note of that, because it is more likely to be factual. After you are finished finding information from these four or more sources, you can turn to your paper or notes.
The more mentions there were of a particular claim or statement among the sources, the more likely that statement is to be factual. If multiple writers of different backgrounds and with different ideas can agree on a statement, it is not likely to be highly biased. Chances are it was found by using a sound method that has resisted being disproved. Remember that the statement could still be disproved in the future. Nonetheless, statements that are in all of the sources or the majority of them are more sturdy to rely upon. If the statement is agreed-upon in an even split between the sources, chances are it may be a controversial topic that has not been concluded yet.
Now, once you have decided what the facts are, go back to the sources and read them again. Pay attention to which parts you found to be fact. Much of the rest is probably influenced by personal experiences that the authors had in the past. Much of learning is based on experiences, but personal experiences should not always be used to teach people new topics because the experience may not be transferrable. So, read the sources again, or just one if you like, and then decide what you agree or disagree with. Make sure that while you are thinking about this you are trying your best to think about the situation from multiple points of view.
After you are done reading and hearing what the authors have to say, decide what is closest to your experiences. Maybe ask yourself why you think a certain part does or doesn’t make sense. You could try to think about how a person close to you would interpret this information. Obviously, the writer cannot control how readers/listeners interpret their piece, and your conclusion can be different from another person’s ideas from the article. Think about how the individual statements or facts are related to the larger topic, and how changing a factor of the study could change the outcome. Re-evaluate as many times as you want at the time or later on.
Once you have gone through this process, you are likely educated on the facts and have hopefully thought deeper about the connection between the individual statements. You will have thought about how this related to the author’s life and how it may be related to yours. Bias and individual opinions are unavoidable and sometimes a good thing, but we need to think about what we are told before believing it. It is like the food samples in stores; you need to try a little bit before you buy into the whole thing. Keep in mind that everyone has had different experiences, we have all been taught differently, and that no one can know everything on a topic.
Until next time, keep thinking outside the box, and keep reading in between!
Liberals and Conservatives Hate The Same Things…
They just hate each other too much to work together to come up with a solution.
Think about it. They need the same things. They face the same issues. They just have different ideas about what caused the issues and how to fix it now. Often, they blame each other for causing the issue even when this is not true, thus causing them to disagree with each other on everything purely on premise. The thought process is along the lines of “Well, it’s your fault we’re here at all, so I’m not listening.”
Obviously, when people stop listening to each other, the problem gets worse. They begin to only think about what they were taught is right and ignore the ideas of other people. The other person’s idea may be the exact same as their idea, but they are too stubborn to listen to each other.
One time, two of my family members were fighting because of a prior agreement over a video game. They both agreed to the terms, but they understood it differently. Then, when the second person wanted to play their turn, they both got angry because both of them thought the other person was going back on their deal. Truthfully, they were both correct in their actions according to their interpretation of the deal.
This same thing happens in our highest decision-making processes. Many people are not conditioned to be open-minded, especially if they have been doing political work for the same party or orientation for a long time. They become used to one way of thinking and can find it very hard to reverse or even occasionally bend their way of thinking to come to a conclusion (see my article “The Dangers of Binary Thinking” for a deeper look).
This isn’t necessarily their fault usually. This is caused by our socialization. People in different countries are raised differently, and people belonging to different groups within countries are raised differently. Alberta has a whole different common socialization than Ontario, and that is why they kind of hate each other. Without even meeting a person from there, we generalize all people of a certain place or group to be the same, meaning that we can hate all of them equally. We are taught from birth proper ways to act in certain places around different people. In the beginning, children find this hard to understand because it isn’t in our nature to hate people who are different than us. We are taught that different is dangerous, but we are hardly ever told why. And many parents will give the explanation of “because that’s just how it is” for many of the concepts we learn. We believe them because we trust them to keep us safe and happy and good.
Not only do our families dictate our political orientation and the way our brain works to interpret the world; so do our peers and teachers and role models. They have a greater influence than our families from the time we start going to school all the way through to potentially our 30s. This is why peer pressure is such an issue, and why we believe that teachers are always right. After all, they did get a fancy piece of paper that says they know stuff, so they can never lie… right? Also, how many people got into climate change activism only after Leonardo DiCaprio did? Just saying. Other people have so much influence over us that they can make us believe that the earth is flat if they tell us enough times. We all have influenced the mental development of someone we are close to, and it could be as small as how they put jam on their toast or as huge as the religion they follow. One person can be the difference between pro-life or pro-choice, Muslim or Christian. We largely underestimate our influence on other people, and that is why our bad habits will likely last generations.
If we want to change how our country is run, how the people in it think, and how problems are solved and prevented, we need to develop better listening and thinking skills. We need to stop deliberately passing on our biases and opinions onto the next generation without giving them the objective opportunity to find their own way. We need to work on ourselves as the leaders of right now to be effective at communicating and solving problems by working with others. We are all going to have to do work to get better at helping the state of the world. It’s going to take preventing future mistakes while also learning from the past and keeping track of the present. Most of all, if we stop hating each other for the sake of hating each other, we can find value in each other’s ideas. We could work together to create change that helps everyone. We could think critically about each issue and come up with new ideas our ancestors never predicted. This is a crucial step to civilization that we seem to have skipped while trying to get as rich as we can, and it could be the downfall of human society. Biases and the inability to push past them have caused many wars in the past, so how about we start changing that?
Until next time, keep thinking outside the box, and keep reading in between!
The Twisted Logic of Mass Produced Clothing and the Fashion Industry
Today, I’m going to compare how we think about clothing and fashion to how we think about some other things we wear. Don’t worry, I have a purpose; bear with me.
So, clothing comes in various sizes. Small, medium, large, extra small, extra large, and so on. However, many people, especially those who wear clothing marketed to women, have experienced the issue of having a closet full of clothes that fit them but every brand they own has a different size tag. This is because different brands cater to different body types. When you don’t fit their idea of a good body type, their clothes likely look terrible on you and you don’t know why. Well, now you do.
But the problem is that most common and affordable brands of clothing make clothes according to outdated measurements that are deemed attractive by high fashion. The proportions of the bust, shoulders, waist, legs, and hips are usually very minimal in size difference from each other. When you lay these types of clothing items out on the floor, they likely look like a box that has been crushed slightly due to weight on top of it. I have also bought jeans for myself that fit in the thighs, waist, and the butt, which is rare for me, but the ankles were so small I had to cut slits in the seams so my feet would go through. Who takes measurements for the ankle of skinny jeans but forgets that people usually have feet?
Many large clothing manufacturers often use “standardized” sizes that are not actually standardized at all. They often distort the measurements to be able to fit the body type they think they want to market to, which is usually small-waisted people with hips only slightly wider than the waist, paired with small chests (if we are talking about clothes marketed to women). If people who wear men’s clothing want to have a form fitting item, they need to pay extra or shop at a specialty store. Needless to say, this is highly inaccurate and problematic.
There is also the discrepancy between the sizes of clothes marketed to men and those marketed to women. This causes body image issues in different ways for these separate groups. Clothing sizes for men are usually more agreed-upon by multiple brands whereas women have to try on clothes far more to actually find something that fits them. People who wear men’s clothing usually can look at the size of a pair of jeans and know that they’ll fit, but those who wear women’s clothing likely fit into multiple different sizes of jeans depending on the brand.
There is also the issue of the quantity of different sizes. “Medium” sizes are usually more readily available than larger clothing. In some businesses, they double charge just for extra sizes. While this is necessary up to a point because of the additional material used in the manufacturing process, big stores do it often and at an amount that is unreasonable. Not only does this give the idea that being larger than who they wanted to sell to is bad, but also that you need to pay more to be a size larger. This leads to severe body image issues and potentially headaches with being unable to buy the clothes one wants.
Society also wants us to think that sizes are the same across all age groups and genetic variations. This is simply untrue. People have different body types, which means they are going to be different sizes. People are also at different points in their lifespan, which means that they could need to replace their clothing more or less often than other people. Pregnancy, health issues, money struggles, and genetics all come into play. We shouldn’t expect a thirty-year-old who has given birth to two kids to be the same size as a seventeen-year-old with fast metabolism.
First, I want to bring up dentures. When someone is getting dentures, they need to go in for five to eight appointments beforehand to measure, fit, fix, and fit again so your dentures fit nicely in your mouth. And of course, we can’t just skip out on these appointments because they do all these trials and measurements so the dentures don’t hurt your gums or cheeks or tongue. If we just had a bunch of pre-made dentures sitting on a shelf that were based on previous customers’ mouth shapes, we would have a lot of people who bleed from the mouth or have to go without teeth because the dentures cause them harm. It is also highly unsanitary to try on dentures that have been tried on by other people…
Now, imagine you are going to buy a new pair of Jordans or you need a pair of shoes that are acceptable for work. The first pair you try on pinches your feet and makes you uncomfortable, so you go a size higher. No big deal. You don’t pay a fortune more for that one size up, you just get the size that fits you better. In China, before 1911, women would bind their feet into shoes several sizes too small and pointed impossibly at the toes because that was how their beauty was judged. They were to have the smallest feet possible in order to be seen as beautiful. This caused severe mutilation and painful bone deformation that these women had to live with the rest of their lives. However, in most parts of the world today you either have shoes that fit or you don’t have shoes at all. You don’t need to shove your feet into ice cream cones to be pretty, you just need to have shoes to protect your feet from sharp rocks and the cold ground. You do not keep the shoes as “inspiration” to try and work your feet into being smaller, you just love your feet because they let you walk places (unless you are impaired, in which case you probably like your feet because they’re there to stop you from bleeding out the bottom, or you enjoy the absence of feet because then you don’t have to spend money on shoes.) Either way, feet or no feet, you don’t try to fit into shoes that don’t fit because that would not be logical.
Before the 20th century, almost all clothing was made specifically for the body it was going to be used to cover. If it was a hand-me-down item, it would be altered to fit the new person. This means that contrary to most people’s beliefs, most corsets made by skilled tailors would be made in a way that it would not cause harm to the person wearing it. If you look back into fashion at this time such as dresses and suits, the articles show that fittings were done as often as necessary and alterations were made when needed so the clothing would last a good while and flatter the person’s shape. Many women would take their own measurements and make their own clothing as well so it could be whatever they wanted. If they wanted purple overcoats, then they saved money to buy purple fabric and made themselves purple overcoats. They did not keep their old gowns for motivation to work out, they just altered the clothes to fit them. They did not punish their bodies when a type of dress went out of style, they simply made a new dress if they liked.
So, why, in the last century, has the focus shifted? Why do we know for sure that we can’t just have pre-made dentures for people to try on, that shoes are pre-made but we can’t hate our feet for not fitting into a pair of shoes, yet we think that our bodies are useless and ugly if we do not fit society’s idea of beauty? Why did you flinch or cringe or cry out in sympathetic pain when I told you about foot binding but you or someone you know is trying to work their body sick and contorted so they can be “thicc” with a “tiny waist, pretty face, and a big bank?”
All this has to do with beauty versus health, and what we value more in certain situations. When someone enters the dentist for a consultation for dentures, it is because of their health that they need dentures and that they cannot just try on a pair, find one close, and leave. We know this. When we go to the shoe store, it isn’t considered normal or common to try and beat our feet into these shoes just because someone says small feet are pretty. When we are buying jewelry, we don’t buy a necklace too small to train our neck to be like a turkey’s. This is because we care more about health in these situations than beauty. Sure, shoes and dentures and necklaces might be nice additions to your outfit that can enhance the aesthetic of your appearance, but we do not just buy these things to be pretty. We buy these things because we need them in order to be able to chew, so we don’t cut or freeze our feet on the ground, or because it was a gift from someone we love.
With clothing, however, society tells us that we are useless if we don’t follow the latest trend. With our bodies, society tells us to eat more or go on a diet, which can and is often very harmful to the one being told to change. Society tells us to wear a certain style of jeans even if they are uncomfortable or we hate them just so we don’t get bashed online. We feel the pressure to be small when we see someone who is “overweight”, even when both people in this situation are divine. We think that women need to be so much smaller than men that we are congratulated for still shopping in the children’s section at twenty-three years old. If we have enough fat in our bodies that we could survive an emergency such as famine or near-starvation, we are told to get rid of it. We are congratulated for being skinny to the point that we lose ten pounds every time we catch the flu.
All this attitude toward our body comes from society valuing “beauty” more than health. It does not make any sense to wear someone else’s dentures, so why on earth are we expecting people to wear clothes that are not made for them? We are punished economically for being “unattractive” by huge price differences between the small and extra large versions of a certain style of shirt. We are punished socially for being healthy by people giving you snide looks for eating a burger after having to skip breakfast because you were late for work. Skinny people are cheered on for eating two stomachs worth of food, but people seen as fat are penalized for eating at all.
Beauty standards for men and women have never been fair, and short of in the middle ages, they have never been healthy. Men are expected to have defined muscles on top of muscles in order to be seen as pretty, and women are expected to be so weak they can’t even pick up a four liter milk jug with one hand. Beauty is viewed over health when looking at the picture of everything between our feet and our teeth. We are expected to never have acne, cover up scars we worked hard to heal from, leave our bodies unmarked by traits like tattoos or piercings so we can be dolled up however society wants, and we are told to be so skinny that a strong breeze blows us over.
Not to mention, beauty standards are always changing. People who want to be seen as attractive at a certain time will likely try to work their body into the ideal shape, buy new clothes that fit the trends, and put themselves in uncomfortable positions for photos so they look good to people online. Not only does this harm the person’s self-esteem, but it is also harmful for the environment because of the support of fast fashion when it could be avoided. The only reason fast fashion is a thing is because big retail stores want more money, and they know that the best way to make a lot more money off of a group is to lower individual prices just below their competition.
So, a summary is as follows: high fashion creates the beauty standards for the rich. The poor want to fit in and be like the rich because the rich are a symbol of prosperity. But high fashion cannot afford to lower their prices because their designs take time, money, and measurement to make. This is where big corporations swoop in, rip off the designs, and produce them in “standardized” sizes millions at a time. They give the illusion of giving the people what they want at a better price than professional designers (which makes high fashion look terrible) and hide the reality of landfills piling up with wardrobe replacements and exploitation of foreign workers. Take this into account with the fact that big corporations take regular advantage of tax havens to make the owners billions of dollars while paying millions of other workers minimum wage. Then there is also the issue of having “trendy” body shapes, which increases sales of cheap workout equipment (which can only be found so cheap from big corporations). Basically, big corporations make money off of our insecurities in multiple ways, and we unknowingly encourage it my increasing their sales needlessly.
Everybody in this world is unique and different from the next. Society, let them be. Big corporations, stop being greedy. Let people be happy, let them be healthy, and look for the beauty instead of telling them to bring the beauty to you. No person has the responsibility to be attractive for another person’s gain, and no one has the right to demand their version of attractiveness from another person. We need to stop worrying about appearances and start working toward changing the things that need to be fixed. Maybe like, I don’t know, inflation? Corruption? Dictatorships? Pollution? Discrimination? Conflict?
Please note: I am not calling out any companies for their prices. There are plenty of businesses who follow laws and value their customers and workers. I am aiming this post at the way we think about clothes compared with other things as a society, and how we prioritize appearances over health. I love small businesses and their quality of products, but many big corporations take advantage of the public in many ways, which should be thought of critically.
Until next time, keep thinking outside the box, and keep reading in between!
The Value of Stereotypes, and Why We May Need Them
Stereotypes all come from somewhere. That is just their nature. It comes from widespread behavior displayed by a certain group of people in most situations. They are trends we notice and then hold onto in order to generalize our understanding of people that can be described by that stereotype, which are formed by our interactions with other people that are repeated enough for our minds to group them together.
You have likely been taught that stereotypes are bad. That is generally the basis of many bullying awareness presentations, media studies, and common attitudes. However, I want you to think about why stereotypes are seen as a negative thing. It isn’t as if stereotypes are completely ridiculous lies, because if they were, we would be able to figure out that they are untrue based on experience. If they are not reasonable, then why are some believable? And, does this idea of stereotypes being bad apply to all situations?
We make all sorts of generalizations about the world, people, objects, actions, and ideas all the time. It is how our minds can take in information without going into overload. If we made sure to specify everything we come into contact with, we would probably run out of brain room to learn important things. Stereotypes are a form of generalizations used to explain human behavior to us. We interpret the world largely through the use of stereotypes. So, we cannot necessarily claim that all stereotypes are bad. They are useful for learning about the world as children, they are sometimes necessary for explaining common human behaviors to children, and they are circulating in our heads as we go about our day so we can understand what is happening around us.
However, the employment of stereotypes is negative in some situations. It is not the fact that they exist, for that means nothing. The stars existed long before we did, but they did not exist to us yet. Existing does not automatically mean that something has meaning or is known to all other things. This same logic can be used to explain the existence of stereotypes and the value we associate with them. Stereotypes can exist without our interpretation and use of them to understand the world. However, we associate all objects, ideas, people, and actions with a meaning and a value. We can use stereotypes to aid in our valuing of other people. One could think of stereotypes as a tool for assigning values to people, such as the price gun is a tool for assigning a value to cereal. This price gun is a tool for assigning value to cereal, but we need to remember that not everything is a cereal and not every cereal is the same.
If we use stereotypes to deliberately put someone down, such as calling someone an “angry feminist lesbian” to imply that they have no value, then we can probably assume that the intentions are not the best. It would probably also be an inaccurate employment of that stereotype. However, we know that stereotypes come from somewhere. So where does this particular stereotype come from? If we think about the origins of feminism, the majority of participants were either unmarried or were lesbians who wanted equal rights as men. They were treated as less than for their entire lives, so of course they were angry. There we have it. Some people could interpret this as a negative stereotype, but others could take it as a positive one. The “angry feminist lesbians” did create a lot of positive change because of those parts of their identities. So, the stereotype isn’t necessarily the villain in this situation, nor is it the person being called an “angry feminist lesbian.” The real villain is the person interpreting that stereotype as being a bad thing. We could say that their price gun is shooting a bit lower than the actual value might be.
Value is also an abstract concept. As with all abstract ideas, everyone’s understanding of that concept and the use of it in everyday life is going to be different. The same cereal may show a different number on the price gun depending on where the cereal ends up. If it ends up in a place where cereal is seen as divine or where cereal is rare, each individual cereal is going to be valued higher than in a place where cereal is common and a nuisance. This is the same with stereotypes. In one culture, it may be seen as a disgrace to be a trans man, but in other cultures trans men could be seen as an exemplification of God itself. Stereotypes can be harmful when used in certain contexts, but can be valuable when used in others. Value depends on cultural norms, and every culture has different norms and values they assign to actions, people, and even the stereotypes themselves.
So, why does Western culture constantly warn us not to use stereotypes and to avoid them at all costs? Especially when in practice, stereotypes benefit people in Western culture quite a bit, as long as they are using certain stereotypes. We are told not to discriminate against black women, but the fashion industry makes clothing and has models that directly show that there is no place in fashion for their bodies or minds. We are told not to become rich, exploitative business people… Yet white men are put down for being a garbage collector and not using their privilege. We are told not to become a bully when we are bullied, but then they show that it is more rewarding to be a bully than the victim. Society wants to give the impression of acceptance and justice, but only when that acceptance and justice benefits them. If true acceptance and justice means that tax evading international corporations are forced to shut down, there is “an exception” because they contribute to our economy. If true acceptance and justice means conceding that gay people can practice religion and that people who don’t want kids are not going to change their mind, then we make excuses and call it “logic.”
We are cautioned from using stereotypes, but we cannot be seen by other people outside of a stereotype. We have been understanding the world around us using stereotypes for so long that it becomes almost impossible to wire our brains to subconsciously be aware of it. We are taught to understand the world through stereotypes, but to never let other people know that we do. We are unable to escape being understood through the lens of a stereotype, but we are told not to believe other people’s perceptions of us.
Stereotypes are valuable, but our use of them is what makes them seem bad sometimes. Our understanding of the stereotype comes from cultural and social norms, which guide all human behavior. We cannot escape stereotypes because they are the main way we can understand people and the world. However, we can think about when, why, and how we use stereotypes in our lives and try to use them in a better way. We can try to challenge being seen as a stereotype, but when you rebel against one generalization you just fall into another. People are not going to stop seeing you through the lens that was created by their interactions with other people, but you can try to see yourself through your own lens. After you find happiness in how you see yourself, the stereotypes don’t matter anymore. We need to question why we feel the need to use certain stereotypes in specific situations, and then decide if it is really constructive to do so.
Until next time, keep thinking outside the box, and keep reading in between!
The Dangers of Binary Thinking
All too often, I notice obvious two-sided arguments in politics and social issues. These usually take the form of liberal vs conservative, pro-life vs pro-choice, socialist vs capitalist. I also notice the animosity that becomes apparent when you pay attention to the words that are and are not said. Each side is condescending toward the other, calls their thinking “wrong,” and argues with almost everything just for the sake of arguing. Listening to these arguments and trying to decide which one is “right” is impossible; it’s like picking your favorite out of drinking only pickle juice or being unable to drink anything for four days. Whichever one you choose is probably going to end up biting you later.
Now, you may be wondering what is wrong with these arguments. It may seem as if it is easier to have only two people arguing than a hundred, and to only have two sets of pros and cons to analyze. However, the problem is much more complicated than settling a dispute between toddlers over a favorite toy (although the arguments may sound similar sometimes).
Imagine you have two groups of people. One group is trying to implement mandatory daily health checkups for employees, and the other is fighting for no health checkups at all. You are not allowed to sit out of the argument and are not allowed to create your own group. You see the problem? You probably understand that if the first group wins, then it will cost a lot of money and be very tiresome for the employees. If the second group wins, however, you could risk injuries or outbreaks of diseases in the workplace.
This is often what it is like voting for a political party. In Canada, there have only ever been conservative or liberal parties in office at the national level. In the United States of America, you can either vote republican or democratic. You have to decide which one will benefit you the most, even if that is impossible because you have many things going on in your life. Prioritizing one will almost certainly lead to the deferral or destruction of another.
But this issue is not just happening in politics. It happens in our everyday lives. Have you ever had to settle something between children and have to pick one to give in to and the other one is upset for the rest of the day? Or maybe you have had to go to a meeting but miss your sibling’s first A+ on a report card. Have you ever agreed with one thing someone says, but they cut you off and assume that means you are best buds? (I know I have.) There are obvious problems with this logic of doing one thing and losing the opportunity to do the other, but people often don’t apply this knowledge to the rest of their lives.
There are quite a few problems with binary thinking, aside from the unintended consequences that could happen as detailed above. First off, thinking in a binary way makes people believe there is a right and a wrong way to go about an issue. Really, there is no such thing. Our parents try to teach us right from wrong as children, and this is the first introduction into binary thinking. It causes a cascade of yes or no, good or bad, up or down processes to go on in our minds for the rest of our adolescent years, and in some cases for the rest of our lives. This is further reinforced by the public school system and how they teach us that out of four options there is always only one correct answer. After that, when you get a job, you either do things the way your manager tells you or you get fired and lose your house. If you come up with a new idea about how to sweep, people all over the internet are going to tell you that it is incorrect and will tell you the “right” way. Then you get a bunch of other people telling you that your way is wrong and will tell you their “right” way to sweep. You can then count on the newcomers to the argument to completely forget about your way to sweep and instead attack the opposite group for sweeping wrong their whole lives, no matter which group they belong to. However, that does not mean that your way of sweeping was wrong; it was just not socially acceptable. There are tactics these people arguing with you will use to make you think that you are wrong and must sweep their way to be sweeping effectively at all, but that does not mean that you need to believe them.
The second problem with binary thinking is what the purpose of promoting binary thinking is. Issues are presented to us in this way for a reason: to force conformity, and if that doesn’t work there is the backup plan of causing conflict. When conformity fails, conflict prevails, and that is why binary thinking is harmful to the individual and beneficial to the collective. Believe it or not, conflict often breeds solidarity among those in the same group. So, truly, there is no way to say that binary thinking is either good or bad and still be against the binary. Kind of a paradox there, but it is a good brain exercise. Now, why does society want us to think in a this-or-that kind of way? Pretty easy answer: so they have power over our lives. That’s it. If you think about the kind of decisions one must make when voting, it all has to do with winning some battles and losing others no matter which side you choose. If you can ensure that your way of thinking is presented as the correct way, and make people think that if they agree with you on one thing they must agree on everything else, and keep their expectations for you as low as possible, you ensure your own success with this one initial step. When you have these people’s reluctant attention, you can then put all these ideas in their heads about your enemy. The enemy is portrayed as your opposite in every way. If people already chose you over your enemy once without much information, they are sure to do it again after hearing your twisted truths enough to trick their brains into believing you. All you need to do after that is make sure you continue to promise them the thing they had the whole time, even if it is at the hidden expense of their wellbeing in the end. You will have millions of lifelong supporters and the worst part is that most of them won’t even understand why because it is built into all of our subconscious. When people begin to think one way, it is very hard to stop and change that thinking even in the most irrelevant and tiny of situations. Humans are creatures of habit, and will continue thinking the same way forever if they don’t regularly challenge their own assumptions. Binary thinking is used to try and get people mad at each other instead of promoting them to change things that need attention.
The last problem I want to talk about is the alienation and retaliation against those who think outside of the two mainstream options. About anything. This applies to my sweeping example. The problem with the new way to sweep was that nobody had heard of it before, they did not do it, and they don’t want to question their own actions no matter what. People hate being told that they’re wrong, but they hate it even more when someone points out that they just aren’t right. It makes them question how they have been acting for so long based on habit. It makes them question everything they have been taught. It makes them question their identity. So, instead of choosing to think a little bit differently or try something new, they lash out and avoid situations of unpredictable outcomes. Since we are creatures of habit, and since we have been practicing the binary for so long, we generalize that everyone who disagrees with us on one thing is part of the enemy group. This makes us stop listening. We no longer absorb what they are saying to understand it, we only listen so we can retaliate. It is similar to having to wait for a bad guy in a video game to attack you between each of your attacks. While you are waiting, you are only thinking about what you will do to them and you don’t even pay attention or care what they are planning to do to you. This is the source of most conflict, and it is only able to happen this way when both people are thinking in the binary. Now, if we remove one of them and put in a dynamic thinker who lies somewhere in between the two mainstream groups, the mainstream will eventually have no choice but to listen. Dynamic thinkers look at every argument and try to view it as objectively as possible, so there is unlikely to be a point the binary thinker brings up that the dynamic has not seen. If we go back to the video game analogy, this now means that the bad guy can now predict the player’s moves. If the binary thinker ever wants to win the game, they are going to need to think in the moment about what the bad guy does and come up with a logical plan of action to do next. People hate those kinds of video games because it makes them think differently. They hate dynamic thinkers for the same reason. Since they hate dynamic thinkers, binary thinkers will think of a certain dynamic thinker every time they are talking about an issue they argued with a them over. If they ever see that person again, they will be sure to turn their head or lash out in anger because they cannot handle different thinking than theirs. Dynamic thinkers face alienation for their ways, and it is not just at the one-on-one level. There is hardly a place for us in politics (or at least not a historically successful one), we are not seen as legitimate in business or social safety net situations, and we are the laughing stock of many family dinners because the binary thinkers don’t give us a chance to explain. Dynamic thinkers are seen as “too far left” by the right, and “too far right” to fit into the left. But if you can withstand the social tensions, you will be rewarded with being able to think critically and enjoy life from a unique perspective.
In this way, dynamic thinkers are the kryptonite to binary thinkers because binary thinkers don’t even see them coming. It is hit or miss as to whether they will agree or disagree, but binary thinkers don’t realize that whether dynamics agree or not, they will always have support for that decision. Binary thinkers rarely do because they were not taught to, so their brain is not developed in a way that supports bending. They just break. This is caused by institutions such as the government, public schools, universities, and news stations promoting a binary thought-process and only showing people the same kind of information repeatedly (but that is a story for another blog post).
Next time you feel the urge to instinctively start arguing with someone because they disagree with you, try to understand why they think like that. If you can find out why they think that way, and if you can understand why you think the opposite, you will be one step closer to dynamic thinking. You’ll be able to think critically about each situation you enter and you’ll likely find that you have a renewed interest in everything you read and talk about. It also leads to the ability to come up with new solutions to problems in many areas of life. Try it!
Until next time, keep thinking outside the box, and keep reading in between!
About Me
I am a young adult who is tired of seeing biased information running our lives. We need more objective analysis on issues that are very relevant to our daily lives. We need more acceptance of many ways of thinking. We need a way for people to express themselves and voice their ideas that are not just founded on the logic of “because I said so.” We also need ways to build our critical thinking skills so we can overcome these barriers. I went to public school until grade eleven. In the next school year, I completed grades eleven and twelve by educating myself from resources online, in books, and using my own critical thinking skills. I completed grade twelve early that year and began my first year of university in a Bachelor of Arts program online. I disliked it as much as I disliked the public school system, but I learned a lot during those first few months… most of which was taught to me by myself.
What I found insanely high amounts of in my education for that little taste of university life was bias. Every one of my courses had blatant biases in it, and I wanted to point them out to the professors but I did not want to be labeled as the argumentative one. But I am over that fear. I have always wanted to be a writer, but everyone told me I needed to either go to school and be told what to do or get a “real job.” Well, they were both wrong. I am delving into the practice of independent journalism, editing, and maybe some activism eventually. Stay tuned!
In my blog, I will be sharing the things I have learned in the last two years and things I have realized in a more recent timespan, and will continue to do so long after I am no longer a young adult. But I won’t just be spitting out information the way it was taught to me. I am going to be looking critically at every issue individually, pointing out the success stories and the failures, and coming up with some possible alternative actions that we can do to create the best outcome for everyone while limiting the negative consequences like never before. So, buckle up, because I have a lot of random things I am going to be writing about that are sure to be relevant to your life in ways you never thought of.
Get ready for a regular shove into critical thinking and a wonderful push into the worlds of politics, economics, and social issues in a way you have never seen before. This is exactly what you did not know you needed. It is exactly what you’re going to crave after I get you hooked.
Welcome to The In-Between!
PS: Shoutout to my wonderful mom, who gave me the idea to start a blog, and to my dad who raised me with enough courage to start it at all.