Simple Dichotomies

I’ve pretty much heard enough for several lifetimes of binary assertions like ‘you’re either with us or you’re against us.’ Almost always, I think, it’s just not quite that clear. You might be more or less ‘with us,’ and also less or more ‘against us.’ You might not care one way or another because you don’t think it’s an important enough issue on which to have a unilateral stand (or to learn enough to try to acquire a unilateral stand). You might be against us, but only because we don’t share a common view of the relevant facts of the situation, or because we don’t have any facts in the first place. And the same could be said for a lack of common values: you might be for your own values without, particularly, being against ours. It goes on like that for me. Your standard liberal who just isn’t willing to take a stand.

On the other hand, there are some things that seem so self-evidently true that I can’t imagine how we get to thinking there’s any possibility of another side. For example, Jimmy Carter said "War may sometimes be a necessary evil. But no matter how necessary, it is always an evil, never a good. We will not learn how to live together in peace by killing each other's children.” I just don’t know what ‘the other side’ of that could be.

But, binary thinking is part of our nature, and so it crops up all the time. For example, I found myself thinking about dichotomy this morning while doing some errands about the Point.

This photo is taken on Benson Road, at Drewhenge. The iconic cow is close to his barn and is now well-dressed for winter with blanket and hat. I think the very existence of the cow, not to mention his wanderings and changes of attire, can only be characterized, with respect to neighborliness, as FRIENDLY.



This photo is taken on APA Road, facing North at Calhoun St. It looks on to a large tract of land that houses one of my beloved abandoned houses. I have walked onto this land any number of times over the past ten years to look at the house, to photograph it, to be drawn into the past it represents. In contrast to the cow at Drewhenge, I would characterize this newly-erected chain, posts, and sign yelling POSTED/NOTRESPASSING/KEEPOUT, with respect to neighborliness, as UNFRIENDLY.

Drewhenge and the APA tract owners: With us or Against us? You be the judge.