Black and white and gray

Telling someone that they are stuck in "black and white" thinking is a modern day insult. It conjures images of the 16th century papacy wrongly insisting that the earth is the center of the universe in the face of Galileo's insights. Or more recently, the insult is applied to Christian fundies for their strict and wrong interpretations of the bible. Duality thinking is seductive because it makes the world terrifyingly easy to understand. Light and darkness, good and evil, body and soul, water and fire, ones and zeros. It's beautiful in it's minimalistic perfection. Especially when you place your team on one side and everyone else on the other side. Heaven and hell, life and death, black and white, straight lines, perfection.

We sew duality into our stories to make them captivating. Look no further than the book series that produced the first (and only) billionaire author on the planet. Millennials love Harry Potter so much that they single handedly revived a previously lame Los Angeles theme park. And who can blame them for resonating with an epic tale of good versus evil? Add butterbeer to the mix and boom, literary hit of the century.

Irresistible Icarus

Philosophy is not a popular topic at brunches and nor should it be. Learning how to die is not a merry subject. A truly enlightening conversation is often an uncomfortable one and thus an impolite one. In fact, the best time to talk philosophy is after your audience has consumed a bongs-worth of weed. In that case, everyone is too stoned to remember how rude you were.

For the introspective few, philosophy and truth feel like an inescapable pursuer. The muse sticks with you like an earworm. It's a form of possession which drives its host deeper and deeper into the woods. In Christianity, this possession is called the indwelling of the Holy Spirit. Non-Christians don't agree on a word for it but are affected by it just the same.