We are Not Binaries
Why can’t we see the full spectrum?
One might argue that humanity’s strength is in our diversity. Humans are an ever-evolving spectrum of self-expressions. You can’t predict what kind of person will be born into a body. Yet at birth we’re labeled by nationality, race, gender, class, and even religion. While these labels often dictate environment, they’re largely a construct, implying a false set of limits to what a person can do or be.
The truth of our potential is suppressed in service of narrowly-defined systems, supposed on/off switches of one quality or another. Many of these labels, like “Christian” and “heathen,” were literally designed to divide us (or erase us). Categorization implies hierarchy and allows us to trod upon one group or another, promising a share of loot to those who play along. Appreciating our full spectrum, would extend value to all, and equality is inconvenient to our extractive systems.
When these divisions are to be believed, they must be defended. Though the need for defense is itself an admission of how unnatural divisions are. Our cultures become cults when we are trained into a “right way,” a sense of moral purity that negates that which falls outside it. And even when we think we are taking ourselves out of the role of oppressor, by identifying with one side of the aisle or another, many Americans still succumb to the larger brainwashing, the idea that we live in the greatest nation, a “true” democracy, and are thus entitled to push our agenda on others.
Identity politics aren’t new concept. We know that certain groups have oppressed others. But if we understood the extent of our current oppression, we might question our participation in certain labels and categories. I don’t mean to deny our experiences. My skin is white and that’s afforded me privileges. I’ve had certain needs suppressed for being born with X chromosomes. But those stories don’t actually reflect my value. I must untangle my inner constructs of “whiteness” or “woman” lest I get swept up in the narrative, good or bad.
Women have been victims but that does not make me eternally the victim in every situation. Men have hurt me, but to say “men suck,” is in some ways reinforcing the binary, the false division between us. To be clear, I think traumatized people have a right to rage at their oppressors and get their feelings out, but when it comes to constructing a better way forward, you can’t fight dehumanization with more dehumanization. You’re just passing the ball back and forth.
Our troubled histories aren’t really the result of any person’s gender or skin color. But it’s convenient to capitalism to have us divided, rolling our eyes at the “other.” Never meeting in the middle to find mutually beneficial solutions.
They convince us we’re under attack. There’s a war on Christmas. Men are being cucked. Queer culture is being “forced down our throats.” China wants to overthrow us (while we’re the ones who’ve surrounded their country in military bases). Defend ourselves, we must!
In truth, safety is not something you achieve by mowing down the opposition. Oftentimes, that actually makes you less safe. True safety is cultivated in a balance and exchange of resources.
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I follow a gardening TikToker, Mike Hoag, who explains why polyculture (planting multiple crops together) is beneficial. It’s harder for pests to decimate one crop if you’ve planted it among other plants. Hoag also explains how colonial Europeans were confused by Native American gardeners, who spent as much time tending to the “weeds,” as they did the vegetables. They didn’t realize that the weeds were just other edible plants. I’ve often realized upon googling that many weeds in our yard are edible, not to mention helpful to pollinators and soil health.
In nature, growth is expansive, but cyclical. There is a dying back, cold seasons, rainy seasons, migrations. It is rare that one species goes on and on overtaking the others, without disastrous consequences. Ecosystems don’t function well with one all-consuming winner – such species are considered invasive. It’s not that there are no predators – predators maintain balance.
But western minds are bent toward hierarchical thinking, the search for a winner. Capitalist ideals are programmed into us. Industries are driven toward exponential growth, an endless pursuit, for more and more, creating need where it didn’t yet exist. If we don’t deprogram that, we’ll always be off kilter, fundamentally unwell as a whole, heading toward the fall of an empire that didn’t really need to exist in the first place.
We get tripped up in good/bad dichotomies, where everything exists in a top down hierarchy. We see a recognition of one’s value as an insult to another. But two things can be true at once. A happy homemaker doesn’t negate a working woman. A person can be wrong on one issue and correct on another. We are susceptible to ideologies with seemingly good aims that go off the rails because they are held up as the one and only way. We get swept up in shame programming, addicted to finding the right path, to being the best, safe from judgment and persecution.
Many criticize our western fixation on “charity” vs true solidarity. Charity is an act that goes one way between benefactor and beneficiary, cementing one’s worth upon another. But solidarity understands that you might need something today, and I might need something tomorrow. You may want to believe you are insulated from loss, but global warming and infrastructure collapse prove that none of us is truly safe. Circular, or sharing economies, are more effective in making sure no one gets left behind. Is that not to some degree the point of community? If we identify with one community to the exclusion of others, perhaps that sense of connectivity is lost.
I’ve heard people describe the division between Jews and Muslims in the Middle East as an intractable fight that has existed since the dawn of time. And yet, the Middle East is somewhat unique in its capacity for co-existence. I was recently on Wikipedia reading about the Fertile Crescent, where settled farming is believed to have begun.
“The area is geographically important as the "bridge" between North Africa and Eurasia, which has allowed it to retain a greater amount of biodiversity... The Saharan pump theory posits that this Middle Eastern land bridge was extremely important to the modern distribution of Old World flora and fauna, including the spread of humanity.”
This area has continued fostering and connecting humanity, via the silk road and the Suez canal. But in our Western quest to stake our claim there, via various military incursions, we’ve made it out to be an inherently violent and competitive place. And no matter how “politically correct” our terminology has become, we may as well be describing them as savages that need saving.
Binary thinking keeps us upholding divisions. Jews vs. Muslim. Good neighborhood vs. bad. Educated vs. uneducated. Communists vs. “free” democracies. It has us jockeying to be “the best” instead of trying to relate to one another as equals.
The fall of the Berlin wall is often regarded as a high point of the 20th century, and yet here we are, installing razor wire at the border and caging our fellow humans at alarming rates, for being from somewhere else, for being unhoused, for walking in public while black or brown, for wanting control of our own uteruses, hormones, and bodies. For trying to exist in our own autonomy.
The U.S. is largest exporter of weapons. Division and subjugation is built into our interests. Can we truly imagine this has not infected our thinking?
Even within “progressive” movements, many unconsciously sow division. I don’t mean dissent or discourse, I mean black and white characterizations of one another and violent methods of shutting down communication. It’s how many of us were taught to discuss politics and issues, shaming one another, and shouting one another down. But those things aren’t necessary to claim one’s worth or truth. Truth can infect us. You don’t need to force it upon others. But force has become our norm, and so we are susceptible to bias, fear mongering, and witch hunts.
What if those who fail are not worthless? What if, even the most caring among us, should not be put on pedestals, for they too will make mistakes. The binary takes our eye off the prize of collective wellbeing. Villains and heroes are built up and torn down while broken systems continue on, redistributing resources behind our backs (or increasingly, in front of our eyes). Maybe instead of siloing people into roles, we must learn the value of discernment? Instead of looking to a person’s attributes or identifying labels, such as “socialist” or “feminist,” we might ask ourselves if they are demonstrating safe behaviors, if their actions match their words.
Our obsession with categorization and labeling one another, leads to policing behaviors. I’ll never get over our collective reaction to Covid, how so much energy was spent judging, rather than finding ways to help each other. Aside from financial assistance that came and went, there’s been very little discussion of the long-term solutions that might’ve helped contain the virus and benefitted society at large – stand alone birth centers, smaller schools and class sizes, universal healthcare, housing for all.
Instead, many judged neighbors for wearing or not wearing a mask, while in the background, a largely fabricated inflation made the rich richer and the poor poorer. I empathize with our fear-based trauma responses. And I realize those living paycheck to paycheck (by design) lack the time and resources to fight back against the system. But I can’t help feeling that our preoccupation with getting it “right” played into their hands. Our fear of “other” kept us from seeing the forest for the trees.
We’re obsessed with the horrific acts people get away with, cult documentaries and true crime whodunnits that are often regarded with “well, I never” victim-blaming and demonization. Yet many remain ignorant of the environments that create abuse, the mechanics of predatory behavior, red flags, and what grooming looks like. That’s because if we saw the patterns, we’d realize how much they’re built into the fabric of our society. If we were taught to spot abuse, heal emotional wounds, and repair relationships, we’d have to reckon with large scale imbalances, make reparations, give land back. That seems too complex for our binary minds. It seems like an admission of guilt that would devalue us in the ways we’ve devalued others.
Rather than try to figure out how to dismantle it all, we look to mark ourselves safe in the latest disaster. Our programming kicks in, creates defensiveness. I will survive, one of the strong ones, a good little worker bee. The binary forces us to dehumanize victims. Their feelings are unreal, unjustifiable, their own fault. She was asking for it. He was weak. They brought it upon themselves.
I’ve heard the concept of “soul loss” described by various spiritual and indigenous creators. The idea is that unresolved traumas cause us to lose part of ourselves or repress parts of our psyche. This concept has been linked to the shocking lack of empathy that many Americans feel in the face of genocide. Beyond war, it explains why so many of us can walk past a hungry stranger on the street or shrug off the ongoing gun violence. Turning off our connectivity is a condition of belonging here. We let it transpire, because some are worth less. Worthless.
In shamanism, soul retrieval is a practice meant to reintegrate the parts we’ve suppressed. What if underneath it all, your supposed weakness was a gift of sensitivity and perception? What if you could see value in yourself without having to make yourself better than another?
Maybe life is not so much about navigating gray areas, parsing them out, as it is about tasting the rainbow. Maybe your war isn’t with someone of another shade or stripe, but with the wall you’ve positioned between you. Are you building it up or tearing it down?