Dichotomy

The human mind likes to put things into categories. It makes life much easier when we can separate and compare. It allows for very complex systems to be simplified into manageable pieces. We turn the gradience of the universe to be transformed into parts we can comprehend. It’s a beautiful system, but it is inherently flawed and nothing is more flawed or beautiful than the concept of the dichotomy.

Dichotomy and true opposition essentially doesn’t exist in our world. The only time we can see the idea working is the dichotomy between existence and nonexistence, everything else is much too complex to be described by two opposites. Even with this general truth, we still force ourselves to see the world through opposing lenses. This could just be an extension of our categorization, but why is two our magic number? A lot of nature functions in twos and a lot of aesthetic functions the same. Equal and opposing, but as described before, dichotomy doesn’t really exist as we define it. The world couldn’t work through opposites, it works through gradients. Colors flow into one another, numbers are infinite and indiscreet, and languages are variations of a universal grammar, but we force our perception into seeing these in distinct categories. This happens with almost all of humans’ discoveries. We must make categories, we must make opposites, we want our world to be dichotomic or classified and this can be helpful or harmful.

Let’s look towards politics. In America, politics is the one of most polarizing subjects we have and we are too often forced as a society in to the two directions, left or right. The issue arises that political topics are extremely complex and there is almost never two distinct answers to the problem. Unfortunately we force ourselves into these molds and that seeks to simplify discussion and pacify our need for debate. There is no gray area in politics, you are either liberal or conservative and we judge those labels harshly, but the truth is that if we truly looked at every single area of debate and look into ourselves for our answers, most of us would fall much more closely to the middle. A large portion of society already does that, but scorn them and refuse their participation. Instead, we like the fight. We like have an opposite and fighting against them. There may not be only two answers, but we will choose only two and position ourselves along the line and throw insults to the other side. You don’t hate the other side, you hate the chance of your position being proved wrong and the dichotomy falling apart. You need your rival, otherwise it becomes too much to handle. In our political system today, our government thrives off of this. This is how we win elections and stay in power, by being on your population’s side and fighting for the dichotomy to still exist.

Now we can look at the other side of dichotomy. There’s the saying about “too many cooks in the kitchen” and dichotomy lessens those cooks to just two. We need this in our everyday lives. To lessen our decisions to just two options, we can make the right choice for ourselves. This is another situation where there are often a lot of more options than we choose to realize, but if we were to debate every single one, we would remain comatose. Sometimes we need the dichotomy in order to advance. More often than not, our questions are complex with many answers and we need to lighten that weight for us. “What class should I take?” gets boiled down from the entire course guide to “Linguistics 111 or Anthro 101?” We need opposition and categorization in our everyday life because it would be impossible to live in the gradient, seeing infinite possibilities and debating amongst them all.

Categorization is necessary, but harmful. It is too powerful a tool to use and too powerful a tool to not use. We should keep the dichotomy in our everyday lives, but expand to the gradient when get to the general public. Our society should not be forced to choose between only two options and the individual should not be forced to debate an infinite number of options. We need this concept, but we use it far too often for our own good.