Black or White?

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On Politics

6 min readNov 19, 2018

Donkeys or Elephants?

In the lead-up to the 11/6 Midterm Elections in the US [1], I shared some thoughts on “binary politics” and more the one-sided, partisan nature of political discussions [2] — Either you support the Democratic Party (Donkeys) or you support the Republicans (Elephants), with no middle ground, or room for debate.

Meanwhile in Sri Lanka, we have been witnessing an interesting constitutional drama (also known as #CoupLK and a the “Constitutional Crisis”). The timeline is roughly as follows:

10/26: The executive President Maithripala Sirisena fires the Prime Minister (PM), and appoints former president Mahinda Rajapaksa as the new PM [3]
11/9: The president then dissolves the parliament, and calls for general elections on 1/5 [4]
11/12: The supreme court suspends the dissolution [5]
11/14: Parliament meets, and votes for a No-confidence-motion against the new PM [6]

I’m no expert to share my own opinions on the constitution, but I did make the following observations about the political discussion surrounding the drama on Facebook, Twitter and news media.

The vast majority of people’s opinions are still defined by their allegiance to one of the two major parties (i.e. the UNP, the party of the old PM, and the SLPP, the party of the new PM) or their allies.
In a worrying number of cases (though hopefully not a majority), this binary party affinity seems to be more important than upholding the constitution
Voting in a future election is likely to be cut along this binary choice.

Black Eyes

And now for something completely different.

What colour are my eyes? If I said, “they are black”, it would be easy enough for you to understand.

On the other hand, if I told you “they are not black”, what would you comprehend?

If you have met me in person, and observed my eyes, you might say “dark brown”. If you have not met me, but live on Planet Earth, you might say brown, blue or even green. If you are from Mars (and do not know the colour of human eyes), you might even think red, yellow, or purple.

What I am trying to get at is this:

While “Black” has a specific, objective meaning, “Not Black” is a lot more subjective — and varies a lot depending on one’s point of view (and planet of birth).

මගේ ඇස් කළු නැත

In fact, “not Black” has no concrete meaning. It’s meaning is completely abstract, and derives from the binary logical operator “not”. Note, this logic is “binary” because it has two states: Something and “not” Something.

Now what if our logic was not binary? What if we did not have a “not” operator. While binary logic dominates our thinking, there is some evidence that other forms of logic were prevalent in many cultures, including Sri Lanka. There is a hint in the Sinhalese translation of “My eyes are not black”. Google translate spits out “මගේ ඇස් කළු නැත”. Now if this sounds wrong, do not be too hasty to blame google.

The “hint” is that there is no good translation. “My eyes are not black”, while straightforward in English, is a bit of an alien idea in Sinhala.

Not Binary

Now, what might a “non-binary logic” look like?

Let us start with binary logic and break-down some of its laws.

For example, let us consider “My eyes are black”. Let us label this proposition, “P”. Then, “My eyes are not black” becomes “Not P”.

P = “My eyes are black”
Not P = “My eyes are not black”

Now, the laws of binary logic state that both “P” and “Not P” cannot be true at the same time. In other words, my eyes cannot be black and not black at the same time. Also, the laws also state that at least one of the two have to be true: That is, either my eyes are black, or they are not black.

What if we break these laws? Then, the following could also be true:

Both P and Not P: “My eyes are black, and my eyes are not black”
Neither P nor Not P: “My eyes are not black, nor are my eyes not black”

Note, we have moved from binary (2-state) logic, to 4-state logic.

Two types of Ignorance

But what does “My eyes are black, and my eyes are not black” and “My eyes are not black, nor are my eyes not black” mean?

Consider the following types of ignorance:

We are ignorant of nuance. For example, the earthling who had not met me (described earlier) thought “not black” meant brown, blue, grey or green. For it, “not black” simply could not be something else.
We are ignorant of overlap. For example, my perception of black might overlap with your perception of dark brown. In fact, my eyes do look black in certain conditions and dark brown in other conditions.

Assuming these two types of ignorance, “My eyes are black, and my eyes are not black” is true, because my eyes are indeed black, but they are also dark brown, so they are not black. At the same time, they could be a shade of black which, to you, is not black, and a shade of colour, which is inconsistent with your perception of “not black”. Hence, “My eyes are not black, nor are my eyes not black” is also true.

This reasoning can be taken further — to 8 state logic, 16, 32, and so on ad infinitum.

Beyond Donkeys, Elephants and Lotus Buds

Now, some of you might have understood me; some of you might have misunderstood me. Some of you might have both understood me and misunderstood me; while some of you might have neither understood me, nor misunderstood me.

Either way, let me conclude with an exercise for the reader. (I have localised the questions for a Sri Lankan audience. Friends in other parts of the world should appropriately localise the questions. For example, in the US, UNP/SLPP should be replaced with Republican Party/Democratic Party.)

Suppose by some magical power you ceased to be ignorant of nuance and overlap. In this blessed state, which of the following would you label as TRUE, and which as FALSE?

All UNP politicians are illiterate, incapable, and corrupt.
All UNP politicians are intelligent, capable, and honest.
All SLPP politicians are illiterate, incapable, and corrupt.
All SLPP politicians are intelligent, capable, and honest.
I agree with all the policies and track-record of the UNP
I agree with all the policies and track-record of the SLPP
My perception of “Not UNP” is SLPP
My perception of “Not SLPP” is UNP
To win an election, an Parliamentary or Presidential candidate should be a member of the UNP or the SLPP (or an alias of one of these).
I am a UNPer, therefore I am not a SLPPer.
I am a SLPPer, therefore I am not a UNPer.
I am not a UNPer, therefore I must be a SLPPer.
I am not a SLPPer, therefore I must be a UNPer.

Please comment with how many TRUEs you got, and how many FALSEs you got.