You Are Either Binary Or You Are Not

How we came to think in black or white, for right or wrong

People have to survive. The reasons we evolved to put everyone and everything into the keep or discard pile are simple. We lived most of our human existence in conditions where discerning a threat from an opportunity was critical.

The classic example is the rustling in the shrubbery in prehistory. You must decide quickly, is it a hungry lion or is it your spouse? The good news is that it is usually your spouse, but you had to jump away, just in case. It’s an excellent survival strategy; perfect in fact, for times when we lived in small bands and roamed about foraging.

Fast forward, and we live in a much different global village. We cut down all the shrubbery. We annihilated the lions (except for a very, very few). We moved indoors and turned off the night sky. Our campfires and stories are now told on Netflix and Hulu. Our enemies are not lions, but others we create with otherisms.

Still tribal, although it’s now counterproductive as a survival advantage, we make either/or judgments. We put things like gender and race into binary categories. We fail to recognize our shared belonging to the diversity of Earth. Most times, we very often don’t even recognize our shared human DNA. Our belonging.

No one has racial “purity,” exclusive to one tribe. Even Neanderthals are still part of who we are. We are all a blend. No one is 100% all-female or male.

We develop as female embryos and take on a sexual assignation according to environmental conditions in the womb. We are each of us, a mixture of hormones of both testosterone and estrogen, but we have so many other components, it is laughable to focus on these alone.

The title of this essay is a joke. We are not truly, or factually, binary.

It is simply an evolved shortcut based on habits, and less frequently, on longer-term goals. However, that said, we are judging one another, and our role on the planet, as if we are. If we cannot correct this illusion of separateness, we are in great danger.

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Nos deixaram um legado. “Sectarismo Transparece” is published by Bruna Bossle.