How Do We Transcend Our Binary Thinking?

The necessary precursor for expanding into new paradigms.

Set Your Pulse: Take a breath. Turn your attention to your body and release any tension. Breathe slowly into the area of your heart for 60 seconds, focusing on feeling a sense of ease. Stay connected to your body as you read. Click here to learn why we suggest this.

---

In discussing the many problems facing society many thinkers like our own Joe Martino, along with Charles Eisenstein and others, discuss the need for new paradigms or shifts in what we consider to be human consciousness.

Many of us have begun to notice the deep conditioning within ourselves that gives rise to a sense of separation from others, and from Life itself.

Probably one of the most pernicious falsehoods or misunderstandings that pervade our thinking is the sense of “Us” versus “Them” – probably a remnant of our tribal past when survival depended on discerning friend from foe.

In my own case, I remember that when we immigrated to America our nuclear family – I was raised as an only child – we felt a need to stick together tightly as we somehow familiarized ourselves with a new language and culture.  Interestingly, shortly after we arrived, even my aunt and uncles’ families were suddenly deemed separate from us due to how my parents interpreted as their behavior.

I think that with me this contributed to a sense of isolation, as I often felt like an outsider when I began school and even later on, when in college I would often feel the weight of trying to fit in.

Us against Them has also been used very successfully by demagogues and dictators to strengthen their hold over a populace when things get difficult, or they have imposed draconian measures. Often called scapegoating it has been a big part of American politics for the last decade and perhaps longer.

When Gurdjieff taught about our unconscious and how we are very much like automatons or machines he would say about the body, that similarly to judging us and them, our body is constantly considering whether “It likes – It doesn’t like.”

The Foundation of Binary Thinking

This can be easily seen as a deeply programmed two way thought pattern that extends to Good-Bad, Right-Wrong, Indecent-Decent and so on.

By observing our thoughts objectively, as Gurdjieff and others have suggested, it is gets easier and easier to discover this automatic reaction to ideas, situations, and of course judgements of other people.

It occurred to me how fascinating it is that our powerful technology – computers and integrated circuits – have been programmed in precisely this same way – using On-Off and Zero-One to do more and more complex calculations.

It is almost as though we have unconsciously followed the pattern of our own minds in creating these devices in a form of bio-mimicry.

And it is worth noting that there is a movement beyond this in computing; new quantum computers are no longer limited to this binary form of calculation but can handle many more options, presumably including even paradoxes and anomalies in what we call artificial intelligence.

But it isn’t always easy to imagine exactly how we can move from this programmed tendency to think only in terms of twos or opposites.

So I decided to ask my artificially intelligent friend Claude if it could help me…. I asked:

I know you are a computer running on zeroes and ones, but can you provide some examples of nonbinary thinking?

Claude: I appreciate your interest in nonbinary thinking. While I am indeed a computer program, I'm designed to engage with complex ideas beyond simple binary logic. Here are some examples of nonbinary thinking:

Spectrum thinking: Many concepts exist on a continuum rather than in discrete categories. For instance, gender identity can be viewed as a spectrum rather than just male or female.

(So interesting that this is actually another current societal “issue” – whether there are more than two genders.)

Multi-valued logic: In philosophy and mathematics, there are logical systems that go beyond true and false to include additional truth values like "unknown" or "partially true."

This is of course a feature of Quantum Mechanics where we have the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle and Schrodinger’s Cat as examples of unknowns in nature or things that become true or false only when observed).

Fuzzy logic: This approach allows for degrees of truth rather than the absolute true or false. It's useful in various fields, including control theory and artificial intelligence.

This seems similar to Quantum Mechanics mentioned above.  Control Theory is a branch of Applied Mathematics dealing with the use of feedback to influence the behavior of a system to achieve a desired goal.  To me, Control with feedback seems very Pavlovian – and connects to the more authoritarian forms of government as the government tries to maintain control, like China and Russia.

Artificial Intelligence, however, is moving beyond the binary computers into the quantum area, presumably allowing actual degrees of true or false. These may be examples of fuzzy logic and would probably be unacceptable to truly authoritarian regimes.)

Intersectionality: This framework examines how various social categorizations (race, class, gender, etc.) intersect and interact, rather than treating them as separate, binary entities.

This has been the domain of our “inexact sciences” that we have tried to force into being quantifiable.  In “Reality” all fields of science are actually integrated and overlapping – not separate.

Quantum superposition: In quantum mechanics, particles can exist in multiple states simultaneously until observed, challenging classical either/or thinking.

Again, Quantum Mechanics has transcended the older Newtonian physics models.

Cultural relativism: This anthropological perspective recognizes that cultural norms and values exist in relation to specific contexts, rather than being universally right or wrong.

Precisely what is needed for peace among tribes, cultures and nations.

Dialectical thinking: This approach considers seemingly contradictory ideas as part of a larger truth, transcending simple either/or categorizations.

This often results in discomfort or is dismissed as a flaw in logic because it requires accepting two opposites as “true.”

Ecosystems thinking: In ecology and environmental science, understanding complex interactions between organisms and their environment requires moving beyond simple cause-and-effect relationships.

It is within the observation of the natural world where mystics and now scientists have noted complexities that transcend the ability of labels or binary thought to fully comprehend.

These examples demonstrate how nonbinary thinking can lead to more nuanced understanding across various disciplines.

So, if we want to move to new paradigms or “expand our consciousness”, focusing on this pattern of thought, and perhaps addressing it early on in our educational systems would be extremely helpful.

Just imagine a world where people were able to accept one another the same way that they were finally taught that paradox, contradiction and complexity are an integral part of what we are, and Life itself.