Beyond Black and White Thinking

Photo by Vincent van Zalinge on Unsplash

For much of my life, my automatic cognitive stance was black-and-white thinking. If something annoyed me, it was bad, and everything around it was awful. If someone said something that hurt my feelings, I'd break off contact and never speak to them again.

Today, I was reflecting that I think that's no longer the case. In fact, I think my automatic stance became seeing both sides. I was thinking about the British Library and how, on the one hand, they do a brilliant job of preserving books and carrying rare works that no one else does. On the other hand, there are manuscripts in that building that really belong to the countries from whence they came, and the Brits have no real reason to keep them. I was thinking about the book I'm currently reading (What's Our Problem by Tim Urban), and I was thinking that, on the one hand, his analysis is good; on the other hand, the tone of writing is so condescending that I have to force myself to come back to it.

Not that I don't resort to black-and-white thinking (what Urban calls "lower rung") at all anymore. I think that, especially in things I haven't rethought since I was young, I probably do have some black-and-white, automatic stances that need a bit of revision. But it was a nice surprise to note that my automatic stance became ambivalent—feeling several things at once. I see it as a good thing, being able to hold both truths as an automatic stance. Mind you, that turns right off during any sort of sports game in which I cheer for one of the teams or athletes.