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!