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The two Americas
Dualistic thinking is a natural human condition. Ancient Greek philosophers assumed that opposites like hot and cold were not relative differences in energy, but were instead something like powers facing each other across a border that pulled objects back and forth between them. Many other pairs were treated the same way, including male/female and citizen/slave to the detriment of human development. Ancient Persia taught the region of the Middle East to think in terms of good and evil, each with its own god — Ahura Mazda and Angra Mainyu, respectively — and the Jews carried this belief forward to hand it off to Christianity. And in biological terms, we are a bilaterally symmetrical species with two halves that not only permit the sound of hands clapping, but that also lead to the bizarre phenomenon of patients who, as a result of neurosurgery are in some ways two persons in one body.
Saying that this is natural does not in any way show that it is either true or false, however. At times, this dualism turns into the fallacy of a false dichotomy, the belief that two mutually exclusive positions cover the totality of a situation. All too often, this is the result of lazy thinking, a failure to investigate all the possibilities. But it is equally wrong to deny oppositions when they do exist, even when those have been set up by the poor choices of the parties involved.
