Overcome bad Thinking - The Binary World View
It's simple. Comforting. Easy. But it has one problem - it's wrong.
Our minds get in the way of truth. It can put up blinders which narrow our perception of reality. One such blinder is binary thinking.
A binary world view simplifies people into good guys and bad guys. It is an enticing world view because it creates comfort for those that reside in it. However, it leaves little room for nuance. This creates an atmosphere of stupidity. I will help you identify binary thinking, which is the first step to overcoming it in your personal life. This will increase your understanding of the world, and the views of the people in that world.
There are many opposing beliefs. Climate change can be believed as a hoax, or the world could be be destroyed in the near future. Someone could be a die-hard Trump fan, or a committed Biden supporter. But don’t be someone who believes it’s always one or the other. A binary thinker is someone who views the world in black or white, failing to see the entire spectrum of colours.
If you fall into this line of thinking you become susceptible to tribalism. This can lead to misunderstanding at best, or hatred of others, at worst. In reality, there are millions of degrees of gradation between any two points of belief.
It’s concerning how accurately you are able to guess someone’s stance on things, once you know a small tidbit of information. If you know someone’s stance on the Covid vaccine, you can probably guess their view on the second amendment. If you know someone’s opinion on abortion then you can guess their position on climate change and free speech. There should be zero connection between these beliefs. Yet we see them highly correlated with each other depending on which side of the political aisle they fall on.
This is indicative of people not reasoning for themselves, i.e. binary thinkers.
There was a post showing some cheese puffs which used flour that had been made from crickets. I didn’t really think this was an issue, so I voiced my opinion. In classic binary thinking, my opinion and actions were wrongly assumed.
THE MOVIE NARRATIVE
Entertainment is filled with good guys versus bad guys.
It’s a comforting way to consume media when there’s no ambiguity between the side of good and evil. There’s a sense of moral comfort when aligning with the right people. Fortunately in movies, the good guys are easily identifiable.
Unfortunately, they’re not as identifiable in real life. However, the binary thinkers have you covered.
“Those that agree with you are the good guys!”
Isn’t that convenient?
The media you choose to consume will you tell they’re the good guys. Nobody thinks they’re the baddies. These people will tell you they are working to make the world a better place, but it’s those nasty democrats or the evil republicans who are trying to stop them. From the media, spawn the influencers and famous celebrities. They have credibility in the public eye, so when they repeat these talking points, the general public start to believe it.
More evidence of people not thinking for themselves.
The world is not divided into good and evil. Every side gets things wrong. Every politician lies. Every person has bad ideas. To think it’s only one side that does this is to succumb to binary thinking.
One clear example of this binary thinking which captured people’s mental faculties was the documentary The Red Pill. Cassie Jaye, the director, is a feminist who has created multiple documentaries on feminism and LGBTQ rights, you can watch her story of being attacked by binary thinkers below.
Take note how she was called a filmmaker who “changed her views on gender equality.”
Cassie decided to investigate the Men’s Rights Movement to try expose them as… horrible people. What she found through her journey was that they had some very valid points. Her project helped shed some light on this subject.
For this, she was labelled as being against women’s rights.
Because if you’re pro men’s rights, then you’re anti-women - this is how binary thinkers think. They’re unable to grasp the idea that someone can be simultaneously pro women’s rights and men’s rights. For this, she was unfairly torn apart by the media and other particularly nasty people.
Life is not a movie. We need to stop seeing it that way and break free from this restrictive binary way of thinking.
If you only hear how one side are the good ones, and that also happens to be the side you align with, you might be caught up in a binary world.