The abduction of 200 school girls in Nigeria is a crime by any standard. When I hear stories like this I ask, what is the thought process that leads a group to group carrying this out? What do they hope to gain? What is the problem for which, in their minds, this is a solution?  Is it really promoting Allah’s will on earth?  Will this really discourage Western style education in Nigeria? To me, step one is to attack the real problem which is the way they and other like them think. This is as clear an example as there is of the overuse of dichotomous thinking.

Starting to use twitter has given me some very useful insights. While I have yet to find anyone who is convinced this is a cause worth focusing on, there are people who “agree” the overuse of DT is a problem. One thing I am going to focus on is the “DT phrases” tab of this site. I think the more I can get people to use the word “dichotomous” the better.

Whatever your cause, stick with it. I am not asking you to join me. What I am asking is that when, in the course of fighting your battle, you find it useful to point out the over use of dichotomous thinking, please do so. You will not only be promoting your own cause but helping grease the wheels for all the other people fighting for all the other causes that are also hindered by the over use of dichotomous thinking.

Since I launched this site over two and a half years ago, I have only become more convinced that the problem I am trying to address is of fundamental importance. I may not have found the right formula for communicating this idea, but I believe it is only a question of time. As the world continues to spin out of control it will eventually become clear that the largest single barrier to solving our problems is the way we think, the way we process information. To varying degrees, the overuse of dichotomous thinking causes or enables all of our most serious problems: war, disease, poverty, injustice, environmental pollution, discrimination, substance abuse, etc. If anything on this site makes any sense to you, I could use any help in communicating this idea more effectively. Please email me at dichotomousthink@aol.com or contact me on Twitter DichotomousThinking@dichotomousthnk

This week started off well for the small minded. The attack on the shopping mall in Kenya was a clear demonstration of how murdering a bunch of innocent people accomplishes meaningful goals. Score one for dichotomous
A unanimous resolution by the UN Security Council represents a body blow to small mindedness. It is true, they may still recover. There are dozen of reasons why Syria’s chemical weapons may ultimately not be secured and destroyed. But for now, score one for goal oriented thinking (GOT).

Next we hear there was a phone conversation between President Obama and Iranian President Hassan Rouhani. A significant step forward for human evolution, but devastating news to the small minded. Both men are being cursed (in different languages) with the same messages. “It’s wrong to talk to those evil people.” “We can not trust them.””Talking to them makes us look weak.” As with Syria, the small minded may have the last laugh, but for now, score another for GOT.

So for this week it’s DT 1, GOT 2.

Whether the Tsarnaev brothers were self-radicalized or influenced by the direct efforts of others, one thing is for certain. The process was a victory for dichotomous thinking. Thoughts like “America is bad” or “America has to be punished” replaced thought like “There is a problem and here is what we should do to address it”. If we want to make it more difficult for this to happen in the future, we need to teach children at as early an age as possible how the brain can be divided into 2 parts. One part is the lower level reptilian (dichotomous) brain and the other is the higher level (goal oriented) thinking brain. There are times when we need the reptilian brain. “Yes that is a tiger and you’d better run.”  And there are times when things are not so black and white and we need to really think about what we are trying to achieve and how to achieve it.

Had the Tsarnaev brothers been taught this idea at an early age, their radicalization would have been more of an uphill battle. One or both of them would have been more likely to ask “Will killing a bunch of innocent people do anything to reverse the effects of modernization and globalization on our beloved Islam?”  “Will killing a bunch of innocent people do anything to discourage the U.S. from invading other Muslim countries in the future?”

People constantly ask, why do tragedies like the ones in Aurora and Newton happen? What can be done to prevent them in the future? While the solution may not be simple, the nature of the problem is obvious. The problem lies in the way these individuals think and reason. We may refer to them as delusional or deranged, but they do function at a level that allows them to carry out these heinous acts. It may not be possible to really know what is in the mind of an individual who can do what these men have done, but consider the possibility that the noise in their heads went something like… “They hurt me and I am going to hurt them back.” “They say I am bad, but I’ll show them.”

Tragedies such as these are blatant examples of how dangerous overly dichotomous thinking can be. What if these individuals had been taught at an early age about the potential dangers of dichotomous thinking? What if they had been shown at an early age to question the utility of dichotomous thinking? What if they had been taught to value goal-directed thinking and been shown how easily dichotomous thinking can derail goal directed thinking? What if the people around them were more aware of this problem? Even the strictest gun control will not prevent individuals like them from acting out. It’s time to address the real problem. It’s time to start thinking more critically about the way we think.

It is true that the US government would never tolerate a significant portion of the US population vulnerable to rocket attacks. It is also true that it would never tolerate 100% of the population living under occupation and subject to control by a foreign power. No one can deny that people have a right to “defend” themselves.

Targeted airstrikes may decrease the total number of terrorist leaders and the total amount of munitions, but does it really bring us closer to the day when Palestinians become serious about peace? Will Palestinian rockets ever bring us closer to the day the Israelis become serious about peace?

Will the innocent victims in Gaza blame Hamas or the Israelis? Does blame do any good? I think it can if it is aimed correctly. The group that deserves the “blame” is the small minded. There are small minded individuals on both sides of the border. They conspire together to promote their way of thinking. Every Palestinian rocket and every Israeli airstrike has the same effect. They support the small minded and undermine the problem solvers. Until more people start to question the way we think, to question the fundamental way we use information, there is no hope of solving problem like this.

The economy and social policies are certainly important, but when choosing a president, the two areas that the president shapes almost exclusively by him or herself is the Supreme Court and foreign policy. In no aspect of government is small-mindedness more dangerous than when it comes to foreign policy. In no area is there more of a tendency to take complex situations and reduce them to simple dichotomies.

From the transcript of Governor Romney’s 10/08/12 speech: “[The] struggle that is now shaking the entire Middle East to its foundation … is a struggle between liberty and tyranny, justice and oppression, hope and despair.”  Good vs evil. Do people really get up in the morning and root for tyranny, oppression and despair. Are these causes that people rally around? To me, of course, it is a struggle between the goals of most people vs mental laziness and small mindedness. Tyranny and oppression flourish when there is a lack of will to ask the hard questions. What is the nature of our problems and how do we address them? Tyranny and oppression flourish most among people who can not get past the us vs them mentality.

“There is a longing for American leadership in the Middle East” “I believe that if America does not lead, others will—others who do not share our interests and our values—and the world will grow darker, for our friends and for us.” If they are not with us they are against us. We need to help our friends (the good guys) and defeat our enemies (the bad guys). I suggest that the problem is not the number of good people vs the number of bad people. The enemy (or problem) is the small-mindedness. The real “value” he is talking about is the belief that all people yearn for a similar set of common goals (peace, justice freedom prosperity, etc).  The greatest barrier (that humans have any control over) to achieving these goals is small mindedness, dichotomous thinking.

“[It] is the responsibility of our President to use America’s great power to shape history—not to lead from behind, leaving our destiny at the mercy of events.”  “[T]ens of thousands of Libyans, most of them young people, held a massive protest in Benghazi against the very extremists who murdered our people. They waved signs that read, ‘The Ambassador was Libya’s friend’ and ‘Libya is sorry.’ They chanted ‘No to militias.’”  This in a country where the US lead from behind. Do we still see such pro-America demonstrations in Iraq or Afghanistan, where we sacrificed so many lives?

I agree that America should take a leadership role in the world. It should be an intellectual leadership. We should be promoting evolution and intellectual development. There will always be small-minded people who want to subjugate others. The goal is not to try to kill them all. The goal is to make their task harder by promoting goal-oriented thinking infavor of dichotomous thinking. An America that acts as if it can use its military might to “shape history” i.e. control rather than influence the world only increases dichotomous thinking and makes the task of the small-minded easier.

There is a general belief that, private profit-driven organizations are more efficient than government. There is also a belief that private profit-driven organizations are inherently evil because they are based on greed. While I can not claim to have a simple answer to such a fundamental question, I’d like to propose a systematic way to think about it?

Step one: what are the goals? What are the goals of the individuals? What are the goals of the organizations? Individuals in the private sector act to please their bosses and earn their pay checks. The goals of private organizations are to make money for their owners. The goals of politicians are to get elected and to promote their individual careers. Finally, the goals of government are to promote the general good, to facilitate life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. As President Obama said at the debate last night, to create ladders and frameworks.

Step two: How do their goals square with the task at hand? Can the problem be solved in a profitable way? Is government really best suited to address this problem? Do the individuals share my values? Whether its voting for a particular politician or patronizing a particular businesses, a good choice depends on an understanding of the goals of the people and organizations involved.

Step three: Are the actions or proposed actions consistent with the stated goals? Is dichotomous thinking derailing a goal-oriented approach to the problem? Is there a lot of noise? Finger pointing? The blame game?