Binary Thinking

I was looking at an Olsen Twins’ website the other day. I know what happens when I say something like that. I know you either assume I’m a big perv or I have the emotional maturity of a thirteen year old girl. One or both of those may be true. I’ll let you decide. Anyway, I was reading this section of the website where fans of the twins can post comments. I was amazed to see that someone with the Internet handle of, “Daisychick86” was commenting at great length about how Ashley is the real talent behind the Olsen Twins empire and that Mary Kate has been dragging her down for years.

I was floored. Seriously? Seriously, there’s someone out there who can make that big of a distinction between the Olsen Twins? Before the one dyed her hair and got an eating disorder, I couldn’t distinguish between them at all. Now, I can see a little difference, but I still couldn’t put a name to either one of them.

I’m not trying to be insulting to twins. I realize that Mary Kate and Ashley are, like all twins, individuals with different taste and personalities who just happen to look alike and share some sort of telepathic connection that allows them to experience each other’s pain. And I’m sure as they become young adults they find themselves yearning more and more for people to recognize them as individuals, but for the past decade they’ve been marketed to the world as a duo. As twins they represent something special. They were child stars who managed to turn something as ordinary as a dividing ovum into a multimillion dollar empire. As individuals, they’re just a couple of teenagers who are into clothes and probably horses. That’s fine if you’re my niece or something, but don’t expect me to see a movie about you.

So what is DaisyChick86 seeing that I’m not? Probably nothing. I doubt she really sees any more appreciable difference in Mary Kate’s and Ashley’s performances in New York Minute than the rest of the world. But, for whatever reason, she’s decided to align herself with Ashley Olsen. And in her mind that means taking shots at Mary Kate.
It’s not an uncommon mindset. It’s binary thinking. To binary thinkers, the world is black and white. They see everything divided into to camps: right or wrong, day or night, on or off, good or bad, Mary Kate or Ashley.

I was something of a binary thinker when I went into college. I attended a small Bible college in Eastern Ky. I assumed my binary mindset would be shared and reinforced by everyone else there. And, to some degree, it was. But sometime in the middle of my freshman year I’m sitting in a class listening to one of my Bible professors talk about sin. Somebody ask him if smoking was a sin. The professor used the question as an opportunity to talk about “bad ideas.” He said that he believe that there were three general classifications of behavior: Sin, not sin, and bad ideas. Some actions were clearly wrong. Some actions were clearly not wrong. And some actions weren’t really wrong, per se, but clearly weren’t very good ideas. Like smoking. Now, I’ve mentioned this idea to people before and they’ve quickly countered that smoking is bad for you and the Bible commands people to treat their bodies as temples, so smoking must be a sin. This is a fun conversation to have with people at a fast food restaurant, because in most cases, these people will throw out maxims like this, completely oblivious to the artery clogging meal laying right before them. So you get to point it out and then they look like a hypocrite.

At any rate, I’m not here to debate the merits of smoking. I’m here to talk about binary thinking. And that day, in that class room, my binary mindset was fatally wounded. I was faced with the concept of a third option.
Wanna know where binary thinking thrives? Politics. Specifically, American politics. American politics revolve so heavily around the idea of a two party system that I would wager that there are some folks out there who don’t even realize that Bush and Kerry weren’t the only Presidential candidate in the 2004 election. That’s binary thinking. I’m not here to argue politics. I promise. But I want to talk about political mindsets for a minute.

Here’s a confession for you: I’ve voted for Ralph Nader in the last two Presidential elections. Not because I think he’d make the best President in the world. I like a lot of what he stands for but definitely disagree with him on some issues. In voting for him, I’ve never even once imagined he was going to win. But I voted for him anyway because every vote counts and I’d like my vote to send the message that not everyone is happy with the current two party system. I realize there are probably holes in that plan of action. If you’re tempted to write me a letter and point out these holes, please do. Then seal the envelope, put a stamp on it, and flush it down the toilet. I don’t care. It’s my vote, see. And I get to do what I want with it. I had trouble explaining that to some democrats this year. They told me that Nader was a spoiler. That by voting for him, I was actually voting to elect Bush. They said Kerry should get my vote. The only problem is that Kerry didn’t earn my vote. He didn’t do anything that made me want to vote for him. I really resented the idea that if I opposed Bush that meant I had to be for Kerry. I really hated the idea that one of these two men was somehow entitled to my vote.

I used to listen to Rush Limbaugh all the time, back when I considered myself a conservative. Now I catch him every once in a while but he’s not really my cup of tea politically or as a radio personality. He kind of grates on my nerves with the whole egotist shtick. Wanna know what really bugs me about him, though? His view on moderates. Rush uses “moderates” like a dirty word. He says that moderates are wishy-washy and unable to make decisions. That’s binary thinking. It’s also fairly ridiculous in my opinion. Not aligning yourself with either Republicans or Democrats doesn’t make you wishy-washy. It simply means you don’t feel your views are well represented by either party.

I imagine the appeal of binary thinking in politics is that it makes it easier to cast people who disagree with you as “the enemy.” Listen to a liberal pundit and who’s behind all the evil and greed in the world? Republicans. Listen to a conservative talk show host and who’s responsible for all the depravity and laziness on the planet? Democrats. That’s binary thinking. That’s an attempt to separate everyone into two camps: those who agree with you and those who don’t. If you believe this, this, and this; you’re on my side. If you believe the opposite, then you’re on the other side. Third options are a threat to that kind of thinking. Third options suggest that not everyone is so easily categorized.

I suppose, at it’s heart, binary thinking is a way for people to try and make sense out of the world. When we can easily categorize something, we’re a little closer to understanding it. But I just don’t think that’s necessary. Your ability to appreciate the world shouldn’t always be dependent on how well you understand it.

That day back in college when my professor challenged my world view it was scary. Now all of a sudden I had to completely reconsider how I thought about my surroundings. I’m glad it happened, though, because it opened my eyes to the fact that the world is rarely as black and white as we’d like it to be. Don’t imagine I’m preaching moral relativism here. That’s not my point. My point is, simply, that we shouldn’t be so quick to judge other people. There’s this scene in the movie Three Kings where Mark Walhberg is playing an American GI during the first Gulf war. He’s being held prisoner by one of Sadam’s soldiers. The Iraqi soldier tells him Walhberg a story about how an American bomb fell on his house and killed his wife and his newborn baby. Up until that point, Wahlberg had just seen the Iraqis as faceless enemies, but now he has to reconcile that image with the fact that they’re also husbands and fathers.

I’m not making any sort of political statement here about Iraq. I just think the movie does a good job of showing you that things aren’t always how they appear on the surface. And while most of us aren’t faced with Iraqi soldiers every day, we are faced with people from different backgrounds and upbringings. We are faced with people of different religions and political leanings. We are faced with people from different countries and cultures. And the more we can do to avoid sticking them into easily defined categories the better. I know I don’t like to think of myself as being that simple to figure out and I doubt you do either. So why not give the rest of the world the same benefit of the doubt?

In closing, I’ve decided it’s time for me to go back to the Olsen Twins’ website and preach against the dangers of binary thinking there. It’s time for me to point out to Daisychick88 and others that they don’t need to choose between Mary Kate and Ashley. They don’t need to choose sides. They can appreciate both of them for the bony young starlets they are. Or they can do what I’m gonna do and go with a third option: Lindsay Lohan. Mmmmm… Lindsay Lohan