There have been innumerable commentaries, analyses, and explanations of last month’s terrorist attacks in Paris. Moderate voices will remind us once again that most Muslims do not support terrorism, and that it is incorrect to portray Islam as an essentially violent religion. One can just as easily cherry-pick one’s texts to “prove” that Christianity is violent. Christians can argue that Islam is a false religion with a false prophet, but that is different from alleging that it is necessarily violent.
But others will point to the fact that, in Paris, two diametrically opposed forces clashed: fanatical fundamentalist religion, and official state secularism. Consequently, they would point out, any attempt to solve the problem of radicalized Muslim immigrants in France must look not merely at politics or economics, but at this basic philosophical contradiction. Compromise, they would argue, is more germane to the world of politics than to that of ideology or religion. One can never reconcile the policy of “laicité” with the goal of a European caliphate. Hence there are only two possibilities: the victory of militant Islam, or the triumph of secularism.
But that is not necessarily so. It has been suggested, for instance, that Muslim communities in Europe be provided with Western-trained imams more likely to condemn Islamist fundamentalism and preach a more moderate kind of faith. Another approach would be to create voluntary self-administering Muslim communities within the secular state, rather like the self-governing Christian communities tolerated by the Ottomans, or the autonomous Jewish communities in medieval Europe.
The other kind of thinking is binary: it sees the world as black and white, with no alternatives. Binary thinking can also be found in economics, among those who see free-market capitalism as the only alternative to communism. This approach, common in today’s Ukraine, sees every attempt to moderate the impact of unregulated big business as supporting the restoration of Soviet communism. It considers economic “third ways” to be unrealistic, even utopian. It thus rejects out of hand any attempt to construct an economy based on local human needs rather than the bottom lines of oligarchic enterprises or remote corporations.
True, in some contexts binary thinking is appropriate. Nature, including our bodies, exhibits bilateral symmetry. Fundamental moral and philosophical issues – truth and falsehood, good and evil – are binary. Even computer science is based on a binary number system. But this does not permit us to dismiss a mass of complex evidence by simply dividing it in two.
Binary thinking is popular because it eliminates the need for analysis. All you have to do is identify two opposing possibilities and choose one of them. There is no need to look more carefully at the situation in order to identify other options or craft a compromise. It’s the lazy man’s philosophy. It also has the allure of partisanship: it’s “us” against “them.” And it’s easy to accuse those seeking compromise of cowardice or fuzzy thinking.
Unsurprisingly, binary thinking can lead to illogical formulations. Writing in Foreign Policy about proposed amendments to the Ukrainian Labor Code intended to protect the “LGBT community” (November 17; shared by the Kyiv Post online on November 18), Matthew Schaaf speaks of “competing visions of Ukraine’s future — a liberal, pro-European Ukraine or a more conservative, religious one.” Like many commonplace views, this one is only apparently logical. For why should one pair the terms “liberal” and “pro-European,” as if Europe represented nothing but liberal ideas? What about European conservatism, not to mention the European Right? And does this mean that anti-European Marxist socialists are somehow “conservative”? Why should one pair “conservative” with “religious,” as if the most popular churchman of the day, Pope Francis, celebrated for breaking pompous protocol and preaching radical solidarity with the poor, should be regarded as a conservative? And how can one treat “pro-European” and “religious” as opposites – as if Europe had been devoid of religion for the past two millennia, or else forgotten its Christian heritage in a fit of collective amnesia? As Mr. Schaaf admits, Ukraine’s most religious region – the West – is also the most pro-European.
It is in discussing Ukraine that such false binaries are especially pernicious. For while the commonplace view of Ukraine as a “deeply divided country” is exaggerated, it is true that Ukrainians need unity. For them, binary thinking is destructive. What is needed is an appreciation of complexity and a willingness to explore beyond the obvious alternatives.
In fact, the issue that Mr. Schaaf discusses is a case in point. The debate over the amendments to the Labor Code is not a matter of “LGBT versus the homophobes,” or of right-thinking liberals versus obscurantist clerics. Practically everyone recognizes the need to protect Ukraine’s citizens from violence or unwarranted discrimination on the basis of their sexual proclivities. The controversy, it appears, is about the language used to denote who or what is to be protected. Should the law recognize the social category of “gender” or only the natural category of “sex”? Since there seems to be no scientific, philosophical or political consensus on these matters, the situation invites the kind of binary thinking that Mr. Schaaf exhibits.
But the situation requires a solution, not a false binary. Why, for example, must the legislative language reflect either of the two opposed understanding of this complex issue? Is it really necessary to adopt the “internationally accepted” – but ideologically loaded – formula of “sexual orientation and gender identity”? Is it any more necessary to adopt the Ukrainian Orthodox Church’s formula of “attitudes toward sexual relations,” which is at once too vague and too narrow? Would it not be enough to say that citizens must be protected from violence and unwarranted discrimination based on sexual attitudes or conduct?
In such matters, unfortunately, the United States has little to offer by way of example. Binary thinking has impoverished our public discourse. Here, the analytically inclined would be better advised to spend this pre-election year closely following sports.