Have you ever stopped to think about how many labels you wear? Left or right? Believer or atheist? Apple or Android? It seems that to make sense of our world, we need to draw a line in the sand and firmly declare: “these are my people, and those are the others.”
This almost visceral need to divide the world into two opposing halves is one of the deepest human characteristics. But what happens when this tool for understanding reality becomes a cage? What happens when simplification leads to confrontation, and the richness of nuance is lost in the battle between two sides?
Today, we’re going to explore this innate tendency toward duality and the sometimes devastating effect it’s having on our world. Because maybe, just maybe, in the gray areas we’ve decided to ignore, lies the key to understanding ourselves a little better.
The Origin of Division: Why Our Brains Love Boxes
As a species, we have an amazing ability and an almost inherent inclination to organize reality. We need to categorize it, name it, define it. And in this monumental exercise of comprehension, we almost always end up fragmenting our reality into categories that help us feel a greater sense of control.
This tendency is not new. If we look at the most ancient traditions and religious texts, we see this pattern everywhere. Consider creationist stories, like that of Genesis, which describes how God, in the early days of creation, separates light from darkness, day from night, and the waters of the heavens from the waters of the earth. It’s a fundamental act of creating order through division.
Of course, it gets more complicated. We don’t just stop at dividing things in two. We also subdivide reality into smaller, more manageable groups: the day and night are divided into hours; living beings are classified into kingdoms, phyla, species, and so on. All of this is natural; it’s our way of processing the world.
When Nature Rebels Against Our Labels
But here’s where it gets interesting. If we observe nature even more closely, we realize there are always rebellious elements—individuals that don’t fit neatly into one category or another.
A perfect example is viruses. They behave like inert particles when floating in the air, with no apparent life. But the moment they come into contact with living cells, they transform: they replicate, feed, and evolve. Scientifically, viruses exist on the boundary between the living and the non-living. So, where do we put them? The answer is complicated.
This pattern repeats throughout nature. There are animals like the amphioxus, which has a precursor to a spinal column (the notochord) but no bones, placing it in a fascinating evolutionary intermediate stage. The dividing line between vertebrate and invertebrate isn’t as clear-cut as we think.
From Genesis to Politics: The False Dilemma Dominating Our World
The real problem arises when we rigidly apply this binary mindset to the complexity of human society. Outside the lab, in our daily lives, this programming to divide, categorize, and generalize continues to dominate.
We see this with tremendous force in politics, religion, and culture. The belief has taken hold that people are either left-wing or right-wing. Even those who consider themselves centrists often feel the need to qualify it (“I’m center-left” or “center-right”), as if being strictly neutral were a conceptual impossibility.
The same happens in religion: you are either an atheist or a believer. You either believe in God, or you don’t. There seems to be no gray area.
When we make these assertions, we are falling into what is known as a false dilemma. We create a forced choice between two options when, in reality, many more exist. A person can have progressive convictions on some issues and conservative ones on others, without their ideology fitting perfectly into a pre-defined package from one side.
The Psychological Roots of Polarization: Fear, Tribe, and Survival
Why do we cling so tightly to these divisions? There are two deep psychological reasons:
- The Fear of Ambiguity: Humans have an innate apprehension of the uncertain. Ambiguity makes us anxious. When something doesn’t fit a known pattern, our brain tries to force it into one of the pre-existing boxes we already have.
- The Tribal Instinct: We need to identify as part of a group, a tribe. It’s a survival instinct. In human history, not belonging to a group, not knowing who “our people” were, was often a death sentence. The person who is friendly to you, but also to “the others,” is potentially dangerous because we assume they will eventually pick a side.
The Age of Outrage: How Social Media Monetizes Our Division
This ancestral programming has found an unprecedented accelerator in the digital age. Social media not only reflects our polarization but also fuels it and profits from it.
Consider the reaction to a tragic event, such as the ideologically motivated murder of a public figure. Almost immediately, the machinery of duality kicks into gear. If the victim is right-wing, certain sectors don’t blame the murderer but “the entire left,” or “the progressives,” as if they were a monolithic organization with a central committee that orders these acts. The same happens in reverse.
The responsibility for an individual’s act is attributed to an entire ideological spectrum that encompasses millions of diverse people.
Social media algorithms exacerbate this. They know that outrage generates more interaction (comments, shares, reactions) than nuanced reflection. Therefore, they lock us in “ideological pens” or echo chambers, where we only hear from those who think like us. This convinces us not only that we are right, but that the other side is monolithically evil or stupid.
An Act of Rebellion: How to Escape the Trap with the “Steel Man” Technique
So, are we doomed to live on this perpetual battlefield? Not necessarily. We can perform an act of personal rebellion and question this duality within ourselves.
I invite you to resist the temptation to self-label. To practice healthy skepticism towards our own bubbles and to deliberately seek out the ideas of the opposition. Not to ridicule them, but to understand them.
This is where a powerful technique known as “Steel Manning” comes into play. It’s the opposite of “Straw Manning,” which involves attacking the weakest, most caricatured version of your opponent’s argument.
Steel Manning is the conscious effort to build the strongest, most robust, and coherent version of the argument of the person you disagree with. Before you rebut, ask yourself, “What is the best way to present this idea that I dislike?”
This exercise doesn’t mean you have to change your mind. It means that instead of fighting a caricature, you are engaging with a real idea. It forces you to find the other’s internal logic, to see the world from their perspective, even if just for a moment.
Conclusion: The Value of Living in the Gray
Recognizing complexity is not a sign of weakness, but of intellectual strength. It’s admitting that we all have some answers, but we are missing many others. That the person who thinks differently is not necessarily an enemy, but someone who is seeing a part of reality that we, perhaps, cannot see.
We are programmed for duality, society exploits it, and technology amplifies it. But being aware of this mechanism is the first step to deactivating it.
In a world that constantly pushes us to pick a side, perhaps the most lucid and courageous act is, precisely, to refuse to do so.
And you, how do you fight against the black and white trap in your daily life? I’d love to read your strategies in the comments.