The science of binaries and modern fluidity: is emotion corrupting the intellect? (Watts, 26)
Humans tend to see the world in binaries. The world is up/down, left/right north/south, light/dark and on/off. In the modern consciousness spectrum is the standard for fluidity or colour. There may be opposite extremes but there is a lot of room in the middle. Are binaries an archaic uncentered outlet or unemotional honest reflection?
The world is perceived in binaries with some exceptions notably gender and sex. While people say the world in black and white there is always an argument for the grey in the middle. Whether this is biological or generational it is embedded in human psychology. Something is defined as one or the other. One is either up or they are down. They either turned left or turned right. Despite the appearance of psychological defence, the choice is either or. There is only two choices. When asked if one completed a task yes and no are the only answers. The inclusion of maybe is a cop out to save face. It is lacking memory of the event but when the event is checked it was either done or it wasn’t. Even partial completion is not completion so the answer is no, not sort of. Sort of means no. Even this case where there is room for grey that being a task was partially completed still fits the no category because the task was uncompleted. The grey in between is at times part of the journey, a means to an end. Dusk exists where it isn’t really light or dark, morning or night which is where evening enters. It is a stage of limbo. Yet by design the sun is technically still out so it is day. Moreover even on its own terms it is a stage to night. Dusk is a part of the cycle to pitch blackness. It doesn’t exist in its own right but as a part of the downward process.
The past two examples do display a reverence for greyness in their own right. Partially completing a task has completed a sector of the task so it’s not uncompleted but it also is uncompleted. Though this is simply semantics. The grey is based on the question asked. When one asked was the task completed and one answers yes or partially the task hasn’t been completed. Folding half the laundry and folding all the laundry are two different points. The task was for the all the laundry if it was for half than it was. Terminological use to create greyness is a fool’s errand. It is unpersuasive and solely mental gymnastics. Dusk is a grey area between day and night. Yet its greyness also may result from misdefined characteristics. The appearance of greyness results from aligning certain characteristics with progressing aspects. Evening exists between afternoon and night. It is technically still daytime since the sun is still out. For dusk, since the sun is not out and the light no longer shines, it is the onset of nighttime. Even if there is a rudimentary grey area it is for a second and then moves on. The spectrum idea is the existence in its own right as an end of itself. Dusk isn’t. Dusk and dawn are processes of sunrise and sunset.
Yet the grey area may also reflect one’s personal perception. Meaning that the binary is instinctive of relative sensation. Turning right or left is relative to the person watching. It depends on which direction one is looking. Turning onto a roadway from the right side is turning left and from the left side is turning right. Though relatively inverted for the observer, the vehicle is stilling turning right or left. Good and evil are classical archetypical elements. Yet what is considered good may change. Killing civilians is bad but killing in war is okay. The grey area that is created by mismatching good v evil attempts to demonstrate that these imperatives aren’t absolute. Accidents happen and extreme measures gravitate to inverted conclusions. Yet this grey area are exceptions not the rule. Meaning that in certain cases situations fall into a middle ground but they are few and far between. The existence of a moment of greyness does not mean that relativity rules the day. It only means that classifications aren’t perfect. So killing in war is good. While that sounds terrible because killing never seems to okay, it is good insofar as it prevails over the enemy. Stealing to survive is considered bad because it is stealing but a legal exception may drop the charge. Just because killing is permitted in war doesn’t make it good, it can still be bad but yet permitted.
In some regard the greyness is the intersection of misaligned tropes. Good usually goes with permission and bad with prevention but that is not always the case. Still note that these are still binaries just conflated. There may be a third option but that doesn’t derail binaries. The binary is not either or it is what is the best option. Someone may project a binary but that doesn’t mean that reality is a binary. Constructed binaries are different than empirical ones. The choices presented are humanely deduced binaries so there may be more options but one them is either correct or incorrect. These binary of the correct answer on an exam may be none of the above but that is the result of the tester providing a binary picture. To this extant, binaries are wrong. There is more than human restriction would prefer to allow. Something is true or false but the embellished record may add deceptive notes to it. Conspiracy theories are a temporal aspect of greyness. Was 9/11 an inside job? Did the CIA assassinate JFK? It was falsely reported that covid came from a lab. Many pushed back with partial truth claims. This grey area of conspiratorial thinking believed truth but was in the process of unveiling. Whether the public knows or not, it either did nor didn’t come from the lab. Recent revelation seem to suggest in the conspirators favour.
The world is very complex but many times it is more perplexing that necessary. Using words like better, safer and faster seem to suggest a spectrum. Instead being fast or slow one is faster than someone else. There is the spectrum of being the fastest. While there is no denying the spectrum of speed being faster is binary. The observer sees multiple runners and graphs their time. Yet for the runner he is faster than the guy behind home and slower than the guy in front of him. Compared to those ahead he is slow and they are fast. He can get faster pass them and then he will be fast and them slow. The use of motion to describe one ahead of the other doesn’t discount their own abilities to everyone else. The slowest runner will beat the audience. So he is indeed fast but compared to his peers is slow. Brian Scalabrine responded to the twitter trolls who believed they could beat NBA players with the scallenge. He torched each one of the challengers remarking that he was closer to the LeBron than they were to him. He rarely played in the league and people called him a scrub. On the spectrum of capability he is both bad compared to his counterparts but better than the average Joe. The spectrum itself is relative. It depends who is worse than other professional players but better than twitter trolls. To make the NBA he must be good but against fellow competition he was bad. This is not anachronistic both can be true at the same time without resulting some grey area. There is no grey area, it depends on the variables at hand.
Relativity does not mean break binaries. The binaries are still adequate it simply depends on the statement at hand. Is NY a safe city? Well it depends what do you mean by safe? Overall based on statistics one could argue yes or no. Then again what is considered unsafe? How much crime reaches that standard? There is a certain complexity. Yet if you ask people they will tell you whether they feel that the city is safe or not. Certain areas are less safe than others. NY is less safe than the suburban areas surrounding it. Does it mean it’s an unsafe place to live? No. Yet in relation to the surrounding suburbs it is less safe. It isn’t safe comparatively. Using words like more or less better or worse to cheapen the blow. Florida is hotter than NY. NY can get hot but NY is not a hot city. Other measures are taken into account namely frequency and consistency. The observer will gather multiple places and determine the safety of the areas. If NY is at the bottom of the list it is unsafe comparatively. It may be safer than other places, it may consider itself safe but relatively it isn’t. Two variables square off and one is mightier than the other. Nevertheless, a city can be unsafe and still live there. There two aren’t mutually exclusive. A city can be safe with the exception of a few bad eggs. Saying a place is kinda safe isn’t very reassuring it seems more a cop out. Though there is an aspect of social engineering into the statistical or emotional magnitude of safety, it is still categorised into binaries.
These themselves are human projections. Something is safe by brute of human dedication. Qualifications are more arbitrary than scientific certainty. Travelling diagonally, heading northeast is still either a right turn or a left turn. People themselves are right handed and left handed. While there may be some exceptions and others with some interesting imbalance, most are righties. The anti-lefty brigade does push more right handed environmentalism but there is genetic output to a dominant hand. A comfort with a single hand even if the other hand is used for other skills like sports. Though people need both hands and religion has blackballed left-handedness it does necessitate more than projected monism of the scientific binary. Punnet squares provide various sequences. Blood type provides more than two solutions. A parent with type a and the other with type b can still produce type ab and type o. The fact that both parents possess an o allele allowing a twenty five percent chance that a child will be o as well as a quarter for every other blood type. If there are three children, each one could have a different blood type. In this situation the blood type is either of the four. It is not binary that hair will be black or that eyes will be green. Genetics may fumble and provide red hair and blue eyes. Thus the spectrum may be for biological conditioning. Physics may have its binary positioning but that doesn’t mean that biologically people are.
If genetics can be construed in a multitude of ways then the binary falls. Though binary may simply mean entrenched categories. Even if there are multiple categories namely blue brown hazel or green, it doesn’t mean that it is therefore non-binary. Binary doesn’t necessarily mean the spatial symmetry between two possibilities but the established foundation of scientific reflection. Attributes to humanity differ in scope. There are various magnitudes which point to a spectrum approach. The world at large may be binary but that is not the same for the individual themselves. The complexity of DNA and execution aids this cause. Yet to some extent it still falls. It is all relative. It is still either or. Whether one has this colour or that colour. Whether one is compassionate or not. Cheerful or not. Could they be projected on a spectrum with others to demonstrate their elevated quality, certainly. Yet this is itself a marker of construction. Who is more compassionate is decided by selected variables. Yet in the same breath from the compassionate person’s perspective they are while others are not. It is a rather clear motivation. It isn’t about demonisation but realistically recognising the clear rationale for proper attributes. Though emotions may have more a spectrum since they are fluid in their own right. One who is not happy is necessarily unhappy. Neutrality does exist insofar as unhappy means sad. Though unhappy more as being not happy is a binary. It all depends on the definition. There is a binary matter. There is a spectrum to levels of happiness but the individuals execution is in line with the sentence or not. Are they happy or are they, it is a simple yes or no question. Cheerfully smiling whispering maybe is an obvious ploy at truly being happy but undercutting it with mystery and humility.
Someone whose skin colour is half-white and half-black will synthesise at times but also many times look more like the white or black parent. They may call themselves half-black and half-white but don’t look it. If someone didn’t look like their parent, they would deny such a statement. Genetics doesn’t always synthesise into a mixture of the two. Some children look more like their parents and others do not. Some are tall others short. It measures by the replication and evolution. DNA is complex but it also categorises itself. Just because much of reality is diagnosed into binaries does not mean that everything must fit into it. There are exceptions and there are adaptations. Evolutions and revolutions mark a new dawn in the complexity of the universe. It is through human initiative that this is even possible. Forced to develop and adapt to new environments. The freedom to act is itself the intellectual monstrosity to decide the universe’s fate. The classical religious projection of binaries displays their categories whether it be god or no god, truth or false. Yet these binaries apply everywhere. Against Galileo they asserted they were true and he was false but in reality it was inverted. The logos defeated the ethos. Even if Galileo’s approach has been mistaken to some extent that would just falsify it and a new alternative will argued in its place.
The ability to seek beyond the binary is the freedom to do so. Once the world is constructed almost anything can be argued. Though at the base level binaries help categorise. Something is good or evil, east or west up or down. All these fit into whether something is true all false. Even the non-binary fits into the binary itself. The category it is placed in may be more fluid on a spectrum just like speedsters but then again the non-binary nature attempts to establish an entrenched model not a directional process. Non binary fits into the binary of binary and non-binary. Though this creates an explosion of seemingly miscalculated aspects. How masculine or feminine is a binary to determine behavioural types most associated with a certain group. There may be exceptions but clear majority takes shape. Binaries can be made more complicated by adding more words like evening or dusk. Definitionally, if the sun is up it is daytime and if the sun is down it is nighttime. Though the argument of intersex is quite peculiar given that it is a rarity and at times a general defect. A mistake in the evolutionary process. Yet beyond this suitable misunderstanding exceptions exist. The capability to resist the classical uses does not undermine the binary motif. Terminological gymnastics are frequently used to decide whatever people desire. Homosexuality and transgenderism both accept the binary, wishing to be partake in the binary of their choice. Freedom to choose instead of fated to endure.
Thus the empirical binary is namely that which is inherited by the majority of the group. The famous lioness lion has a hormonal surplus that gives her a mane, looking like a lion though entirely female similar to bearded ladies. It is evolutionary but it is also rare and an exception rather than the rule. Other animals are non-binary in the strictest sense of the word though my ignorance precedes me. Clownfish can change their sex but it is in dire circumstances and cannot be reversed. The XY chromosomal element is adherent to the mammalian creature. For humans to look to reptiles for fluid inspiration it seemingly a long shot. Though to my knowledge, the transgender critique seeks to alter one’s biological chemistry to be the other so accepts the binary. If anything it seems that gender fluidity undermines transgenderism. The gender issue further becomes difficult when exceptions are used to garner a rule. Hey there is an animal that this, it exists therefore it must be normal. Just because something is a reality does not make it truthful in the same regard as it exists. It is not about demonising but accepting that exceptions due to prevailing circumstances are not the same as emotionally choosing to act differently on the basis of this foreign species.
Reality’s complexity does not deny the faults of cultural histories nor the constructed efforts generationally. Yet in many respects the call to demonstrate more diversity is through emotion. Freedom enables exceptional undertakings. The debate over the LGBTQ community is less about binaries and more about accepting those destined binaries. If one is born a christian shall they remain christian or born an American. Can a girl change her hair colour or a small boy take hormones to grow taller. It is altering biochemistry but it isn’t derailing the binary. It is simply seeking a new outfit. Deciding one’s own destiny. Given the car and repainting it. Adding some new accessories with joy and glamour. The binary isn’t the problem it is the way it is phrased and many time dogmatised to oppress others.
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