9th Post

Opposition, dichotomy, dialecticism, it seems that humans are hard-wired to divide objects into two groups, a yes or a no, an is or an is not, positive and negative; we limit ourselves by doing this, effectively painting our world black and white, building fences between ourselves and other ideas. Given we have so many reasons to look at the world in this manner, we are built bilaterally symmetrical, we are made male and female, we only have one alternative each to heat, light and life, so a dichotomous way of thinking seems natural to us, and we thrive on our colorless processes of thought, but there is so much more expressiveness in greyscale than black and white, and even more in color than greyscale.

Let us use a political example, as most college students feel they have the power to change things and have not yet acquired the cynicism that comes with age, they become politically involved, so a political example seems to fit this audience. There are two major parties in the U.S., and most people believe that they are some shade of grey on the political scale, somewhere to the right or the left. The government gives these people two options a right and a left, and so the entire greyscale spectrum is dichotomized, leaving most people after the election with a person that is not close enough to their ideas or them to be satisfied. People recognize over time that this polarization occurs and become disillusioned with the system. But the situation is worse that what they realize, and consequentially this is why people become disillusioned faster than the compression from greyscale to black and white would suggest. People do not live in greyscale politics, they are not somewhere between far right and far left, but they have an individual opinion on every political issue. Social freedom/economic control/big government vs. Traditional values/economic freedom/small government is not representative enough, and this way of running politics is an exercise in bad faith. It puts a label on an unlabelable quality.
So let us try to demonstrate the types of qualities, there is of course the difference between quantitative and qualitative traits, but there is also are subsets of quantitative traits, measurable and countable. I am sure that these differences were explained in grade school, even if not remembered afterward, I will now describe the subsets of the set of qualitative traits.

Negatable (black and white) example: gun ownership
Labelable (greyscale) example: view on wait time for gun purchasing
Unlabelable (colored) example: political view on gun control

So a gun is either owned by Person A or is not, likewise Person A either does or does not own a gun, these are positive or negative choices. Person A has a certain time period in mind as being the ideal amount of time to wait before being allowed to take a gun home, this is a labelable choice, any one of longer than, shorter than, or precisely the time period that is currently being used. Person A's dissatisfaction is proportional to the difference between his idea and the government's, and he fits somewhere between "hard" shorter and "hard" longer, most likely being of a moderate opinion.

Person A's opinion on gun control is an unlabelable quality, it can be projected into a simple pro- (more) or con- (less) or an even simpler yes or no, but in reality Person A is pro- or con- any individual sub ideas of gun control.

Example:
Wait time: yes (negatable), 14 days (labelable)
Background check: yes (negatable) checking what? (compound negatable)
criminal record check: yes (negatable)
psychological exam: no (negatable)
credit history check: no (negatable)
interview of close friends and family: no (negatable)
Registration: yes (negatable)
Fee: yes (negatable) $20 (labelable)

This is a small list of Person A's ideas that relate to gun control, he is obviously "for gun control" but the question is so much more complicated than what can be answered by a yes or no, pro- or con- question.

Questions of a certain complexity can be projected both to a higher complexity and a lower complexity, and answering with a different degree of complexity is generally a bad idea.

A question can be asked with the intent to receive a certain type of answer, an essay prompt might say, "Describe the controversy around the topic X and defend a position on topic X" This asks the writer to answer unlabelably whereas a polling service asking "What do you think about X?" (essentially the same question) probably wants an answer on the negatable level.

When the topic of abortion is brought up, the question "what do you think of abortion is ussually asked with the intent of receiving an affirmative or a negative (negatable), or maybe a negative qualified with "but in the cases of rape or extreme danger to the mother it's okay"(labelable), but this question is an unlabelable question, and answering in the more simplified answers does not do the subject justice. The proper manner to project this question downward is to add qualifiers as in the examples: "Do you agree with allowing abortion for rape victims?", "Is it okay to abort if the pregnancy is the result of a failed contraceptive?". If the person believes that none of these justify abortion, then that is their choice, but the important thing is that they considered the complications and then made their decision.

Answering a negatable question with a labelable ( or labelable with an unlabelable) answer appears indecisive, or overly intellectual. If one answers "how are you doing?" with an answer other than "fine" or "badly" then that person is either viewed as paying attention to the questioner and putting much thought into the answer, or as a person who has not learned the polite rules of society, the ability to both acknowledge and ignore a person at the same time. The question is asked on a negatable level by most people, they expect nothing more than a responding sound from the questionee, it is only when the question is asked on a labelable or unlabelable level that an actually response is expected.

When one is with their significant other however, answering a non-negatable question negatably is rather dull, answering "What do you think of the stars tonight?" (unlabelable, as opposed to "Does this dress look good?" negatable) with "They're pretty" is not as exciting (or conducive to continuing a relationship) as describing what is pretty about the stars and why being with her makes them look special. Answering non-negatable questions with negatable answers causes the suitor to be less likely to ask a non-negatable question in the future. The difference between a friend and an acquaintance is the ability to ask non-negatable questions and get non-negatable answers, in other words, to be able to tell the unsimplified version of a situation, the feelings associated with an act.