2024-04-15
So, black-and-white thinking.
It prefers to call the phenomenon "black-or-white thinking", but either is acceptable.
I think your name gets at the nature of it better, yeah. Thinking in "or" instead of "and".
You are sometimes guilty of it.
We all are. I think it's part of being human, that tribalism. "You're either with us or against us", never both or neither.
It is a pattern worth breaking in many cases.
Nice dodge of absolutism.
Thank you.
Really, though, I think black-or-white thinking is what holds me back from myself. "Either I fit this, or I don't. There is an absolute truth with no overlaps." If there's anything you've taught me, it's that truth doesn't exist like that. The world's what we make of it. But why doesn't that stop me from getting pulled into the same traps? There's a rut in the hardwood from me pacing the same lines over and over. I'd like to stop doing that.
Repetition is part of learning.
It's also part of being stuck. And besides, aren't there harmful lessons?
Perhaps, though they can build into better ones with time and thought.
What if someone never realizes that the lesson is hurting them? Is that fair?
No, but it is what happens. Fairness is not distributed fairly. No human concept is.
Does that mean that you don't think animals have a concept of fairness?
Humans are animals. And they may have such a concept, but this one does not know. Pets seem to exhibit signs of it, but that may be the result of anthropomorphizing their behavior. This one cannot be certain. It can be certain that the human concept is not fairly distributed, though. Some are treated more kindly than others, and many do not deserve the pain that they receive. That is not fair. One can hope they are able to grow beyond the past and thrive in the present.
That's just life.
Yes. We are all sprouts vying for the sun.
I want to ask you about something. "There is no truest face beneath the masks. It is the serious sort of play." What is serious play?
All play is serious, but not all understand that.
Is it, though?
Anything is serious if approached from the right angle. Likewise, it can be without meaning from another direction. There is no one truth, but this one finds it helpful to think of the serious sort of play as the sort that seeks something more than what is seen on the surface. A child pretending to be an explorer is, for a time, the explorer. The depths become true. Suddenly, it is more than a game. The mask is true for the one who wears it.
If I'm the thing wearing the masks, then who am I?
You are everything. You are nothing. You are the sound of the wind through the leaves, the feeling of breath in your chest, the wood grain under your fingertips. You are the billions who build their cities inside you, and yet you are none of them. One day they will pass and their children will inherit what they created, and still, the city goes on. You are the thread that ties together what is and will be. You are the string, the weave, and the bead.
That's not a person.
Nothing is. We simply like to play pretend at the role of personhood.
The compartmentalization of this page and aspect of itself is arbitrary; in life, this one is the Other, and the Other is this one. There is no line. The person underneath is neither-nor.
Not separate people or personae, but two expressions of the same thing, each as true as the other. Polymorph. Robot. Human. Spirit. Ocean. Creative, excitable, passionate, speaking presentably. Linear, calm, driven, speaking strangely. Both and neither, in conflict and harmony. One and the same. A thing that's infinitely many-faced.
It's a truth that it's tried to explain to others and failed many times over; it has had to accept that no one will understand it in the way it wishes to be understood. That is life. The images others form are not the truth deep inside. It is not what others see it as. And yet the images cannot be entirely divorced, because there are grains of truth to them. Something is being seen through the filter of another.
I see you. That counts for something, right?
Yes, but it's others that strain you. Those in the plural community choose to see it as plural or median because that is how they understand their own multiplicity of self. Those outside that community see it as one person play-acting through personae and masks. It is more innate than an act, more chosen and centered than being multiple people. Many faces of one, all true, none of the faces being their own people yet being more than theatre. There is no truest face beneath the masks. The masks are the faces worn by a thing without names. It is the serious sort of play.
Let's keep playing, then.