"Black, White, and the Comfortable Lie"
by Todd Hayen
"I was talking to a very close friend the other day who happens to be a die-hard Trump hater (I know what you are thinking, don’t ask). We unfortunately drifted into a “discussion” about the January 6 fiasco (and also don’t ask me why I bother). Time and time again, I run into this sort of thing—where the position on the left believes they are 100% right about any particular controversial topic.
No matter how much contradicting (to their position) information I provide, they dismiss it all as garbage. “It is obvious what it is, and that’s that.” As with most things these days, I find this odd. Nothing is 100% a particular way, with zero valid argument in the other direction. Nothing except very simple things. I am, of course, describing the infamous “false binary” or “false dichotomy” or “false dilemma.”
This is nothing new, of course. The idea of the false binary has been kicking around human thought since the days when philosophers in togas were debating the nature of reality. It’s a logical fallacy that’s as old as logic itself, with roots stretching back to ancient Greece.
Aristotle, that granddaddy of Western philosophy, touched on similar ideas in his works on rhetoric and ethics, warning against oversimplifying complex arguments into rigid either-or choices that ignore the messy nuances of life. He didn’t call it a “false dichotomy” per se - that term came later - but he was essentially calling out the same intellectual laziness in his critiques of sophistry, where debaters would trap opponents in contrived binaries to win points rather than seek truth.
Fast-forward a few centuries, and the concept gets more formalized during the Enlightenment, when thinkers like John Locke and David Hume started dissecting human reasoning and its pitfalls. But it really crystallized in the 19th and 20th centuries with the rise of formal logic and fallacy studies. Logicians like John Stuart Mill in his System of Logic (1843) highlighted how people often frame debates as black-or-white to manipulate outcomes, excluding middle grounds or alternative possibilities.
By the mid-20th century, it was a staple in critical thinking texts - consider Irving Copi’s "Introduction to Logic" in the 1950s, which cataloged it as a classic informal fallacy. In essence, a false dichotomy presents a situation as if there are only two mutually exclusive options, when in reality, there’s a spectrum, or third (or fourth, or fifth) paths lurking in the shadows. It’s like saying, “You’re either with us or against us,” as if loyalty is a switch that can’t be dimmed or rewired. This trick forces people into polarized corners, shutting down dialogue and making compromise seem like betrayal.
In our modern madhouse, it’s weaponized everywhere - from politics, where elections are pitched as apocalyptic battles between good and evil, to the Covid era’s “vax or die” mantra that erased any talk of natural immunity or alternative treatments. It’s a mind trap that preys on our tribal instincts, making us feel secure in our righteousness while blinding us to the gray areas where real understanding lives. And that’s the shrew’s (contrarian thinkers) edge: spotting these illusions before they hook us.
Kit Knightly, the sharp-witted editor at Off-Guardian, wields the term “false binary” (or its sly cousin “fake binary”) like a scalpel in the operating theatre of narrative dissection - precise, incisive, and always aimed at the festering heart of controlled opposition.
Primarily on OffG, where he’s been a cornerstone voice since the site’s early days, Knightly deploys it to unmask how power structures peddle rigged choices. Such as the endless left/right, red/blue, or vaxx/anti-vaxx traps that corral dissent into neat little pens, ensuring the real exit stays bolted shut. His star turn? Co-hosting the September 2024 livestream “Debunking the False Binary” with the freshly minted Independent Media Alliance (IMA) - flanked by heavyweights like Iain Davis, Derrick Broze, and James Corbett. There, they eviscerate the “fake binary” as a core narrative control technique, spotlighting how “alternative” media gets infiltrated with hopium-laced divides: Trump saviors vs. Harris horrors, pro-Ukraine “freedom fighters” vs. pro-Russia isolationists, or techno-utopias vs. Luddite panic—all engineered to seed division while the technocratic overlords chuckle from the shadows.
Elsewhere, Knightly echoes this in IMA’s launch manifesto, framing the false binary as public enemy #1 in alt-media warfare: countering “false two-party paradigms,” imperial war cheerleading, and digital ID “solutions” pitched as the lone fix for every ill. Knightly doesn’t just name the fallacy; he maps its deployment in real-time psyops, from Covid compliance cults to election theatre, urging us to torch the scripts and dance in the nuance.
Why do people cling to false dichotomies like life rafts in a storm? Sure, the agenda-pushers love them - black-and-white framing is the perfect divide-and-conquer tool, herding sheep into opposing pens while the shepherds count the wool. But let’s not pretend that’s the whole story. The real rot runs deeper, straight into the human psyche, where comfort trumps complexity every time.
Most folks aren’t wired for the cognitive marathon that critical thinking demands. Nuance is exhausting; it requires holding contradictory ideas in your head without your brain blue-screening. Polarity? That’s a cozy blanket. Pick a side, slap on a label, and suddenly the world makes sense - no pesky gray areas to trip over. It’s the mental equivalent of fast food: quick, satisfying, and ultimately bad for you. Cognitive dissonance is painful; false binaries are painkillers.
Carl Jung, that old Swiss sage of the psyche, nailed it when he spoke of the “tension of the opposites” - the electric space where thesis clashes with antithesis, birthing the living synthesis that is real life. This isn’t some tidy resolution; it’s a perpetual tightrope walk, demanding we hold the unbearable “unknowning” in our trembling hands, staring into the abyss between black and white without flinching. Most sheep-types (and I have to say, many shrew-types as well these days) bolt for the cliffs of certainty, terrified of the vertigo that comes with admitting “maybe I’m wrong, maybe it’s both, maybe it’s neither.” The ego screams for solid ground - pick a side, plant a flag, silence the dissonance - so they collapse the tension into a false binary, snuffing out the very spark that could illuminate truth. Most critical thinkers (at least the ones I mingle with) thrive in the friction, muscles aching from the pull, because that’s where the gods hide, whispering secrets to those brave enough to listen without answers.
Then there’s the tribal pull. Humans are pack animals, and nothing bonds a group faster than a common enemy. “Us vs. Them” isn’t just a narrative trick - it’s evolutionary. Back in the savanna days, you didn’t survive by pondering the moral ambiguity of the rival tribe; you picked your side and swung the club. Today, that instinct gets hijacked by algorithms and talking heads, but the wiring’s the same. Admitting your team might be wrong feels like betrayal, so people double down, even when the facts are screaming otherwise.
And yes, critical thinking’s been on life support for decades. Schools teach compliance, not curiosity. Media rewards outrage, not analysis. Social platforms amplify the loudest, simplest takes. We’ve raised generations that confuse certainty with strength and doubt with weakness. When you’ve never been taught to question, polarity isn’t just easier - it’s the only path you can see. And this, needless to say, is largely, if not entirely, the work of the agenda, whose sole intention is to control the masses.
That said, the agenda exploits what’s mostly already there: a collective laziness of mind, a fear of ambiguity, and a desperate need to belong. The shepherds don’t create the sheep; they just build better fences. Those of us who use our critical thinking see the gates and seek ways out of the herd. Most don’t even look."
Todd Hayen PhD is a registered psychotherapist practicing in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. He holds a PhD in depth psychotherapy and an MA in Consciousness Studies. He specializes in Jungian, archetypal, psychology. Todd also writes for his own substack, which you can read here.
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