NEW META-MODEL DISTINCTION: Either-Or Phrases

3. Either-Or Terms and Phrases If you want to narrow down your mind, your choices, and your creativity, there is an easy way to do it—think and reason in either-or terms. Of course, why would you do that? Why do people do that? Ah yes, in service of simplicity. It makes the world simpler ... and more distorted! Viewing and languaging things in either-or terms is Aristotelian thinking and it creates two-valued terms like good or bad. This creates the problem of mapping a false-to-fact distinction. It leaves out (deletes) excluded middles, continua, both-and perspectives, degrees, gray areas, fuzzy or indeterminant areas, etc. and so creates over-simplifications.

When you use either-or formats, you represent the reality as if there are only two choices in perceiving, thinking, valuing, and responding. You polarize back and forth between the two choices. Historically, we have tormented ourselves with the either-or orientation in the classic issues of philosophy: heredity / environment; nature / nurture; genetics / learning, etc. These false-to-fact concepts force you to think in a bi-polar two class category. It is either heredity or it is environment, so, which is it? You are either a failure or a success.