Amerika

Our impulse as human beings is to divide the world into universal categories with a much more mundane origin.

There are things we like, and things we do not.

Frequently these are translated into the universals of “good” and “evil.” Although good intent and evil intent exist, they are not inherent categories so much as terms we use to describe our world.

This habit of translation creates a society that thinks only in terms of yes/no, 1/0, on/off answers. When the largest granular unit is the individual, all things boil down to the perspective of an individual.

Take Russian roulette. To an observer, there is a one in six chance of fatal injury each time the game is played. To the individual playing it, there is only a binary question: will this be death, or not?

Through a process called projection, we universalize this personal perspective in order to affirm ourselves. We are no longer concerned about the statistically possibility of risk, but that it may or may not happen to us. This tends to make us demand more assurances that there is no chance of it occurring.

This projection is the most complex process of denial by the human mind. It causes and allows us to control others. When we communicate with them, there is what we want, and everything else is a second state.

In order to accommodate us, our society begins offering binary versions of all aspects of reality as they appear to the individual: true/false, profitable/unprofitable, legal/illegal.

These in turn replace knowledge of reality. What actually occurs does not matter. What matters is predicting which side of the binary others in your social group will fall on.

Thus nature’s most complex machine becomes, through the process of first individualism and second socialization, the least complex possible process.