Binary Thinking in a Non-binary World

Today we are seeing the rejection of binary thinking, such as with gender fluidity and non-binary identification, being led by courageous people.?This is great and there are many more aspects of binary thinking besides biology, that are being challenged. But how did we dig ourselves into a binary hole in the first place?

Is it possible that since the beginning, in multiple societies, people saw the world through a “binary lens” from sunrise to sunset?

Did every society have existential preoccupations and look for in others, things that mirrored their own societal thoughts??Thereby creating a binary, us and them, lens to see the world??Did such thinking pervade biology, sociology, politics, economics, and religion?

Or was non-binary thinking originally the norm, across multiple cultures and societies worldwide, but then somewhere, sometime, binary thinking emerged and became dominant? One would need to do an enormous amount of research and write a thesis to answer this.?

In my opinion, humans did not begin with a binary lens. Humans had far more cognitive abilities than other primates. We were able to categorise our perceptions into more than two categories. We could contextualise and appreciate nuances, know when to make quick decisions and when to ruminate.?We did not need to rely only upon binary fight or flight responses for survival.

Our earliest ancestors most likely would have looked to natural phenomena to explain things and to develop their morality.?Then in some parts of the world, they created a religion with an external God with which to enable those in power to justify their version of morality, and to punish those who didn’t agree with their version.?Did binary thinking emerge from this and expand across the planet over the millennia with each wave of violent conquest of so called empires, using religion as justification?

In the case of biology and evolution, there are indeed good reasons for two genders differentiated for reproductive purposes and natural selection. However, not all species are exclusively, biologically male or female. Also though rare, there are species that reproduce through parthenogenesis without genetic variation.

The laws of nature show that the world consists of non-binary existence in other ways too.?Days do not instantly change into nights and vice-versa. Skin colour is not only black and white. Characteristics of one type, whether it be ideologies or personality traits do not preclude characteristics of the other, from being present.

The binary notion of abled and disabled is another fallacy.?All people who live a full life, will go through a range of abilities and disabilities, from infancy to old age.?Neurodiversity is another spectrum across the population, not a binary one.

Non-binary thinking and binary thinking may result in the same decision, in agreement.?There need not be disagreement.?However, the process by which decisions are reached will be very different.

Binary?thinking?need not only emerge from the victors and the powerful, but it could also emerge from the powerless and the traumatised.?The former is seeking to preserve their?power, the latter seeking?to obtain it.?Populist leaders can be very attractive to either or both sides of binary thinkers, who are not interested in knowing the nuances.?It is much easier to accept populist, gross generalisations (and lies) when you see the world through a binary lens.

Binary thinking may not reduce with old age. Old age doesn't guarantee wisdom. Many people spend the first half of their life building an egoic, composite identity; and spend the rest of their life defending it. Instead of dissolving ego and increasing awareness with age, people thicken their ego and ignorance, till their last breath, through decades of identification with the mind and notion of self, instead of realisation that at our deepest level, our essence is undifferentiated consciousness, not eternal self.

Ancient sages from the Vedic cultures knew that notions of duality, of “us and them, me and you” were illusions of the ego, and that at the deepest level, beneath all physical and mental forms, animate and inanimate, is undifferentiated consciousness. Forms are on a spectrum and not binary. The yin and yang symbol shows that humans understood this.

In our world of forms, the binary notions of “heaven and hell” in some religions, are certainly not present in other religions in which there is awareness of multiple planes of existence.

Perhaps the answer to the above question of “how did we dig ourselves into a binary hole”, is as simple as human ego and power.?Ego need not be a “dirty word”. Ego is probably essential for identification with form and with the (illusion of) self as a mental and physical form. Awareness of the ego would help us see and appreciate the spectra.?Non-awareness would lead us to binary thinking.

This is not to say that binary thinkers are egoic and non-binary thinkers are not. Belief that one's identity is wrapped up and limited to either is egoic. Perhaps binary thinkers believe that non-binary existence itself is immoral and object to it. However, immoral behaviour is not exclusive to any forms of identity and is based on the values of the identity and the context of the behaviour. Morality itself is non-binary. For example, killing another sentient being such as an animal for food, is moral or immoral, depending on one's values (that human life is or is not more valuable than animal life) and the context of where and how one is able to live and the alternatives available.

The ego’s need and propensity to create divisions, is backed and magnified by agents of certain religions and states, for whom their business and/or political model relies upon binary thinking; a business model that takes advantage of the human ego's desire for not just a self, and promises an eternal self in heaven.?A state of non-awareness of our egoic mind, our unconscious mind is fertile ground for binary thinking.

Hence it is not surprising that much of the world dug itself into a binary hole, and despite that at least some people today in some parts of the world are willing and able to dig themselves out of it, despite strong resistance from various people whose ego and/or power is invested in maintaining a “binary” power imbalance in their favour.