A Third Way

The binary choice of yes or no, one or zero, is the language of the machine. This language is used by most of us every day, every time we type on or read a screen. Most of us probably don’t notice, but damage is being done to the way we think, and thus the possibilities that come out of our thinking are limited from the start. Creative thought is strangled.

Binary thinking is the pinnacle of efficiency. Efficiency, when it becomes its own goal, is perhaps the most heinous idea humanity has ever embraced. Philosopher Erich Fromm noted that efficiency took precedence over every other concern in the concentration camps in Europe. Often, the regrets of those running the camps were more centered around inefficient figures and processes than anything to do with humanity.

An unswerving dedication to efficiency leads not only to massive abuses of human rights, but also to that person we’ve all been on vacation with who plots and plans the whole thing out to the point where the plans become the trip, and nothing else can be seen or experienced. Efficient thought steals beauty and joy, and quickly becomes degenerate. We have to work to redeem it.

It’s not that we turn off computers and retreat back into caves, but it is necessary to understand the problem with binary thinking and how the tools we use encourage this sort of thinking. The machine gives us two choices, neither of which is fully true or truly productive. It wants us to choose quickly. You are not to think too long; just press the button for yes or no. Black or white. Right or wrong. Choose.

Most choices in life are not either-or, left or right, one or zero. There are mysteries. There are hidden truths that must be searched out, not skipped over in a rush to click the “right” answer. Many roads may lead to the same place. Something seen through the mist may be more clear than a clinical description. So I get used to not being rushed or forced into choosing between two ways of thinking. There is always a third way, a way of seeing that is outside of the machine.

The third way is simply to ask a question. To refuse to be siphoned into a prefabricated box of efficient thought, to refuse left or right, but instead form the habit of looking more deeply, seeing more nuance, and feeling less need to rush to judgment. That pause—the moment of questioning the choices—is freedom from the machine, actually: a way to see outside the present choices and reclaim thinking as our own.