Destroying Binaries, One at a Time

Why Radical Moderation Exists in Four Dimensions

One of the primary goals of this blog is to carve out a space for real radical moderation. Not mealy-mouthed moderation or compromise or meeting in the middle, but a four dimensional way of thinking about our shared political, moral, and social landscapes.

As part of that process, I’ve come to regard binaries with a kind of deep suspicion bordering on fear. And that’s because to solve real human problems we have to stop splitting them into false binaries that distract us from real solutions.

But I also dislike binaries because forcing complex human problems into binaries encourages a view of moderation as mere movement along that binary line. In reality, the radically moderate solutions are outside of the binary altogether and require rejecting that binary before we can even start working on next steps.

As just a couple examples, here are some binaries that we’ve convinced ourselves exist but that are actually figments of our imagination:

Left and Right: There’s good evidence that humans don’t actually think this way and lots of evidence that while our elites are pretty polarized because they’re really fighting over power, most Americans at least don’t really think in binary or polarized terms (much). Moreover, most human problems are best approached not via partisan binaries but via complex, often local, problem-solving.

Optimism and Pessimism: the radically moderate alternative is some blend of realistic optimism or optimistic problem-solving. Whatever we call it, we want to be aware of trade offs and avoid the dangers of utopian hubris, but we also want to be realistic about the powers of human innovation. Whether the problem is climate change or poverty or homelessness, neither blind optimism nor pessimistic despair is going to help us solve them. What we really need to do is dig in, figure out where the pits are located and who is stuck in them, and problem-solve a way out. But if we don’t think there’s any point in trying, why would we bother? And if we think the problem will solve itself, why bother either?

Community and Individuals: I’ve talked about this one a lot in other places, but this binary is particularly dangerous and also really dumb. Individual humans need communities to develop, to function, and to flourish. Normal human development literally hinges on being around other human beings. There’s no binary between individual and community, only an interdependent relationship between individuals and the social relationships that help those individuals thrive (or don’t).

Rights and Duties: While there’s a lot that can be said here, suffice it to say that rights are meaningless unless people are also fulfilling their duties toward others, most minimally to respect their rights. No right is absolute and because rights always entail duties and duties (often) imply rights, there’s no way to separate out the two and it’s pointless to try. But we see people separate these all the time, as when people claim extreme and absolute rights or when other people argues for duties to others that are never reciprocal.

I could go on, but that’s a decent start.

Why Binaries Suck

Avoiding these binaries and others like them is really really important because binaries encourage - or even enforce - moral flattening.

Binaries flatten the moral and political world in which we live, convincing us we have two options, one good and one bad. They take our complex and beautiful and messy 4D moral, political and social landscape and make it a polarized binary with two options in a zero sum game.

Binaries also flatten human beings. They encourage us to reduce other people to a single aspect of their identity: Democrat or Republican, liberal or conservative, pro-life or pro-choice. Once we flatten them, it’s easier to reject their viewpoint and experience and easier to view them in tribal terms.

But most people are not binaries. They are complex and messy and have lots of competing ideas and values and goals. Reducing them to cardboard cut-outs and our pluralistic and colorful 4D landscape to a binary makes us all worse off.

We’re worse off because the binaries blind us to non-binary alternatives and prevent us from finding real solutions or at least ameliorating human problems.

And binaries are actively dangerous because they make us treat each other as enemies when we’re all really fellow travelers working our way through sometimes treacherous terrain. The combination of zero-sum and tribalistic thinking that binaries encourage leads toward extremism and violence, not solutions.

There’s a lot that could be said here and a lot of other binaries that are worth interrogating, but since I’m focused right now on finishing up the book manuscript this will have to do for now.

In the meantime, which binaries will you reject today? And are there binaries that actually *do* help us better understand the world? Share in the comments!