Is Binary Evil?
Let’s cut to the chase.
Binary is evil when harm is done.
The failure to move past harm is a signature of binary thinking.
What are we saying?
There is A. (We charge!)
There is B (We stand still.)
— —
That is what we have — a straight line.
Let’s try it again.
There is Charlie. Here is Jane.
They are locked not in an embrace, but in a fight.
First there is
— —
then there is
—
What then is the inevitable feature of the binary?
Worst case: conflict until one or the other is vanquished.
Now, bear with me.
We’re going to do a little philosophy.
Here is a binary proposition:
- I think
2. I am
Begins with one. Ends with two.
TRIADIC THINKING
Charlie Jane +
I think I am +
(Always a THIRD ELEMENT
—
Step Three)
AND
A triadic form, aka a triangle, can
NEST!
It is a gateway to infinity
It is the signature of continuity
It implies fallibility because it continues to suggest amendment, reiteration, a continuing process.
IT IS EVOLUTIONARY
Now I shall not bore you with a litany of binary bashing.
But I will ask you:
Is not dualistic thinking binary?
Is not either-or thinking binary?
Is not our culture saturated by binary conceptions and expressions and actions?
And if this is so, are we not schooled to think of most things in terms of
opposition,
of opposites,
of conflict,
of struggle,
of sign meeting brute force
and that being the
end of the matter?
And if into this soup there comes a still small tinkling bell that rings three times and says,
“No, loves. We have been triadic all along. You were too busy fighting to notice.”
well then, we are in a pickle.
And we might ask the legion of nominalist, dualist philosophers whether something like triadic thought might be useful in minimizing the conflict that wracks the world?
Or do we say with Rem
OH, NO, I’VE SAID TOO MUCH
?