Binary World

While we have written here about language, technology and how things influence us as people, it seems that this is a plot we must again return to once again.. While we have written of how language effects our world view, and how the internet could have only been invented by speakers of English. Earlier posts have discussed how English seems a very basic language, with fewer shades of meaning than say Arabic or German. it seems that we have have taken the binary nature of our language to a new level. Not only do we embrace a binary language we seem not have to embraced this as a culture and as political norm. You are either for or against- there is no grey area. If Black lives matter than other lives can’t matter. We cant seem to find balance or any ambiguity. It reminds me of the middle ages, when the inquisition was burning heretics.  The Jesuits responsible wrote down all the confessions before lighting the match and the amazing thing is, many of these people were not heretics at all. As detailed in Carlo Ginzburg, “The Night Battles”, many of these people were simply expressing folk beliefs that didn’t fit into the common idea of the world and hence were deemed heretics. They were condemned simply because their world didn’t fit into the binary thought of the time- you are either with God or with the Devil. While the Reformation brought about the ability for there to be different points of view it too came with a cost. Hopefully we have learned that because we don’t see eye to eye, doesn’t mean that we have to take out the other persons eye. Also, lets remember, we survived the inquisition we will survive this too.