Dualities

“Either you are with us, or you are with the terrorists.” “If you criticize Israel, that means you are antisemitic.” “If you question the president, you must hate your country.” There are many examples. These statements represent the “either-or” fallacy. Of course, a person might not agree with everything their country (or their president) does and still love their country. Of course, one could oppose the actions of Israel and still support the Jewish people. Solutions to problems are generally found with a more balanced approach. The trouble is, we have been encouraged to see things as blue vs. red, left vs. right, or us vs. them, rather than take a hard look at our opinions.

I taught my students that we need to question our own biases and prejudices. I call this the zeroth law of critical thinking. Just because we want a thing to be true or we have repeatedly been told it is true doesn’t make it so. And often, in the process of taking sides, we are told to believe opposite things at the same time. “He is totally incompetent AND is a master criminal.” “They are nasty vermin AND secretly run the world.” While there are self-effacing but highly effective people, it seems to me it’s unlikely that a narcissistic con artist will also be a great statesman. It’s more likely that I’m Batman.

We need to be aware of our suspicions and fears. Sometimes when we say, “I thought so,” we are admitting that we believe the worst about someone else – or a lot of people. Yet many of us characterize others as good or bad based on pure propaganda or identity politics. The Republican Party is not “The Party of God” any more than the Democratic Party is “The Party of Evil.” We need to avoid such package-dealing. 80 percent of the time, both parties represent people with good intentions. It’s unfortunate that 20 percent of those associated with party politics make 80 percent of the noise.

I find I don’t have a home with either party. I believe in ideals and principles that seem to be things of the past. One example might illustrate.

I recall the old TV westerns, in which a gun-slinging bully would shoot the ground around someone’s feet and tell him to “dance.” I don’t know how realistic this scenario was, but I do know that a man with a gun is likely to be emboldened by the “equalizer” in his hand. In 70 years on this planet, I’ve noticed that some people seem to enjoy making others do their bidding, even if it means embarrassing them or making them suffer. It seems to me “pulling the strings” has a strange allure. Some bosses succumb to it. Even some conductors become intoxicated with the power they have over the orchestra.  

An old cartoon comes to mind. A conductor stands before an orchestra with a smoking gun in his hand. The caption reads, “Let’s try that passage again. This time without the second oboe.” Maybe it’s a good thing we don’t arm conductors!

Back to my point: Some wealthy and powerful people seem to enjoy making others dance to their tune. Some bosses exploit their workers. One said he wanted his employees to “wake up terrified every morning.” Some practice the art of mass layoffs to paper over their own bad decisions. Some rich men exploit young women. Several of them are keeping secrets about the times and places where this happened. Some powerful men don’t seem to care who gets hurt by their decisions. And some of the rich mobilize the not-so-rich to help them exert their supremacy. If we end up with an AI running things in the future, let’s hope it won’t be trained by people like these.

Like Diogenes searching for an honest man, I search for people with principles. So far, I’ve found that people with principles have a hard time accepting the dualities we are presented with. Despite what media outlets try to sell us, choosing a leader is not like rooting for the home team or believing that our side is always right and the referee is wrong if he rules against them. We need to be able to acknowledge the strengths and weaknesses of many points of view, reject the notion of us vs. them, and resist the temptation to make people dance just because we can. Unless we desire division and conflict, duality will not help us. Let’s seek humility instead.