(This is Part 12 of a series. Go back to Part 11.)
5. Black-and-white thinking (the fifth source)
The fifth major source of the shadow in human life can be referred to as black-and-white thinking. It is the tendency of the human mind to separate reality into two opposing camps. These opposing camps are then given labels and, of course, "we" are identified with the good side, the right side, the side of light and beauty while the opposing side is identified with all that is ugly and brutal and evil.
Thus during the Holy Inquisition of the Catholic Church, one was either a "follower" or a "heretic". No in-between position was considered or allowed. And a "heretic", of course, was anyone who disagreed even slightly with the viewpoint of the church.
The next and logical step was to posit that since heretics were outside the church and thus by definition outside all that was good and moral and right, that therefore heretics were associated with evil and richly deserved the brutal tortures and burning deaths that were visited upon them.
A similar phenomenon occurred during the Vietnam War when our troops referred to the Vietnamese as "gooks". Calling them "gooks" dismissed and dehumanized them and thus made it more morally acceptable to degrade, harm or kill them whenever "necessary". And in similar fashion, the Vietnamese had a dismissive name for us.
Many other examples could be given. One of the most egregious would be Hitler's ascribing to the "Aryans" all strengths and beauties and to the "Jews" all degradations and vileness, a false dicotomy that ultimately led to the most barbaric and tragic consequences.
Another name for black-and-white thinking is us-versus-them thinking. It's just looking at the same thing from a slightly different angle. In us-versus-them thinking it is always "we", of course, who are the "us".
The "us" can be ourselves, our family, our tribe, our race, our sex, our religion, our politics, our nation—anything at all that we identify with. And the "them" is conceived of as an opposing force that is somehow the opposite of "us".
But that way lies madness. In effect then we're saying to someone, "I see you as part of your group more than I see you as a human being". By seeing someone as defined by a group more than we see them as a human being, we do them and ourselves a huge disservice—because we don't really see them.
When we do that we miss the mystery and subtlety of
the being. We close ourselves off from the brilliance and majesty of reality-as-it-is. We fail to perceive the presence that is forever present when we look upon reality without being captured by our small divisions and definitions.
It is possible to be clearly aware of the mind's divisions of reality without being captured by, attached or caught up in them. Instead, all our mind-made divisions are seen in the context of something much, much deeper, something that pervades all things and that has no divisions whatsoever.
(This is the end of Part 12. Go to Part 13.)
—jim sloman, 12.14.05
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