False Dichotomies

See footnote

I’m gonna start with a joke that will undermine every point I’m going to make. But it’s been bouncing around my head for a while, and though I posted it on my Bluesky, I’m not active enough there and it fell on the deaf ears of my paltry followers. So here’s another attempt at a chuckle.

There are two kinds of people in the world: those who can spot a false dichotomy and those who can’t.

Photo by Marija Zaric on Unsplash

But seriously, I think people generally fall into two camps¹. There are those who believe authority is there to help others, and those who believe authority is there to punish others.

Be it God or Government, there is a pervasive worldview—more pervasive than many of us realized, it seems—that says authority has its watchful eye on poor behavior, and will lash out to correct it. That its sole purpose, perhaps, is this lashing out. And what constitutes poor behavior² is dubious.

I think there’s a doctorate thesis³ to be written about how someone’s parents or upbringing could lead to this view of a vengeful god or administration, but I’m not so interested in exploring the roots of this worldview.⁴ Like many a self-serving essayist before me, I’m just going to ruminate and pontificate on where we are now without trying to dig up the how of it all. I’ll wade around in the waters in the hopes that it will help me understand the tide.

And though it will recede, as these tides tend to, the question is how much damage will be left behind when it goes. And before this metaphor threatens to obfuscate my point rather than clarify it, let’s be clear about what’s causing today’s tides, in my humble opinion. It is this latter group of people who believe authority—and let’s ignore the umbrella term and admit we’re talking about government, shall we?⁵—is there to punish.

Not us, of course. No, no. We are good and deserving. We are the lucky children of this invented nation, and the luck is ours to keep because we have somehow earned it. It is others who will be punished. Those who are here to take what belongs only to us. Those who dare tell us how to live our lives without listening when we tell them how to live theirs. If government is to exist at all⁶, may it be a vengeful one which rains down its brimstone on the hordes of the undeserving reaching with their greedy fingers at what only we deserve. Those who are threatening our existence and livelihoods.

Which, of course, comes down to the idea that there’s an “us” and a “them.” A vengeful governing body is not a welcome one unless we can imagine ourselves safely on the side of the “us”, and imagine that all others are a “them” who want nothing more but to destroy us. And thus, punishment.

And why wouldn’t we feel this way? There is such comfort to this layout of the world. Because if others deserve to be punished then we deserve to be rewarded. We are good, and have worked hard to get all that we have. They are wretched, undeserving, trying to take what belongs rightfully to us, by virtue of our…well, virtue. If others are punished and we are not, then we are right about how special we are. If an iron-fisted government is around to deny entry, tear families apart, take away resources from those deemed undeserving, strip the rights of people different from us, but does not turn its punishment on us, then our worldview is confirmed. We must be good, and they must be bad.

Suffering—all suffering—is validated, as long as it is happening to others. In fact, others’ suffering is to be celebrated, because it further cements us in the camp of good. And if others are being punished somehow, we are likely gaining. The world is a scary place, but only if the scary stuff is happening to others. It follows that with “them” suffering, the society we inhabit will further benefit us, instead of them. By punishing, our government is indeed making it a better world for us.

This, of course, confirms our belief that the world is a scary place⁷, and the only way to be protected from it is to redirect its brutality onto others.

Sigh, it even feels icky to take on the point of view, even rhetorically. No use being facetious in the face of the tide. I’ll drop the shtick.⁸

It seems to me that if government is not there to help as many within its society as possible, then clearly it is there to punish. It is a parent with a belt. Not one meant to hug or nurture or teach , not one meant to feed us unpoisoned food, not one meant to protect us from disease, or ferry us safely from one place to another. This parent stands there with a belt, telling us to be good, telling us no one loves us like them, and then runs out of the house and whips anyone who dares to say they are the type to whip. They whip anyone they don’t trust. They whip and say that the world is brutal and they are protecting us. They pick the most vulnerable and point the finger, saying that is who they will whip to protect us. If they don’t, then all hell will break loose and we will join the suffering.

It’s not even the cognitive dissonance that makes me throw my hands down in resignation⁹. It’s the sheer blindness to luck, and the unwillingness to share it. I understand fear might be the root cause, but I cannot fathom feeling entitled to the world and yet not making the leap that others are entitled to it too.

I don’t understand crafting a society in which we are not meant to care for each other. I don’t understand building a government of any kind if its purpose is not to provide as much as we can to as many as we can. And I do not how we provide to as many as we can if we are looking to punish instead of helping. If poverty exists, it is not a government’s duty to punish the poor, but to try to help.

I do not understand wanting to become a parent just to wield a belt. And I do not seeing someone begging to hold the belt and not immediately distrusting them. Even if they say the belt will not be turned on me.¹⁰

Look, I don’t disagree with the premise that the world can be a scary place. I’d even go so far as to say that it’s one of the few things everyone around the world might generally agree on.¹¹ It’s just that I fundamentally disagree on how to make it less scary. Surprise, surprise, it’s not by making the world scarier for others.

If we improve others’ lives, we improve society, simple as that.¹² If we provide them with food and shelter and the means to survive, the world around them blossoms. Better schools, more green spaces, more opportunities.

“Our sociability is not optional, and we only survive at all because of each other. Yet our cooperation, in this era anyway, has been decidedly selfish. This has gotten us into our climactic fix, increasingly threatening our individual and collective survival. None can survive if everyone tries to be the fittest individual, but all can benefit if together we try to build the fittest society. Thus is our evolutionary conflict. Which is ultimately more adaptive to survival: selfishness or sociability?” –Just a Couple of Days, Tony Vigorito

It’s likely that the punishers of the world would scoff at my worldview, dismiss it as naive and unrealistic. I’m sure some would even feel the urge to punish me for it. Hell, one of these scared-of-the-world punishers¹³ has been quoted saying “the fundamental weakness of western civilization is empathy.”

It is just so logical to me that the more we help others, the better off our society is. A society where we feed¹⁴ and clothe and heal others is significantly less scary to me than one in which we hoard our good luck and hiss at those who eye it.

Look, if this post is circular and repetitive and broken up by jokey or patronizing footnotes¹⁵ it’s because this all feels like something that shouldn’t have to be said, but urgently needs saying. Punishing and destruction, undeniably, is one way to govern, one way to view the world. Slash, punish, destroy everything that isn’t mine in the hopes that it’ll improve my life. And yes, I know that there might be more nuance to it than how I’ve laid it out. That people might believe in helping others sometimes and punishing “them” another time.

I don’t care in the slightest if providing help is imperfect. Give me inefficient attempts at help over efficient destruction any day.

1. 🚩🚩🚩

2. Not to be confused with the behavior of the poor, although for many, I’m sure, the Venn diagram of the two is a single circle.

3. I am sure it’s theses, and that this premise is pitched so often that many a psych advisor has rolled their eyes at the suggestion and said, “yes, yes, I’m sure your parents fucked you up in one way or another, but let’s go a little deeper, shall we?”

4. Actually, I’m hella interested. If you’ll forgive the use of ‘hella’ in an essay that is aiming for an intelligent voice. I just don’t feel equipped to go digging in the murky, dark depths of how this worldview comes to be, not right now.

5. I do not have the requisite number of paid subscribers to delve into the God of it all right now.

6. It is meant to exist, right? Is this still a universal premise?

7. Yeah, someone messed us up. Our parents or our church or some sort of trauma that no one gave us the skills to overcome.

8. But just that one.

9. Okay, it is. It’s all the different flavors of cognitive dissonance. Take your pick: We live in the best of all possible worlds, and yet it is a terrible one.. Ours is the best country, and yet we should destroy it. Our government is the envy of others, and so we should tear it to shreds. This land is vast and beautiful, and so we should remove the few protections we’ve placed on it. Elites are ruining the land, so we should hand control to the billionaires. Freedom of speech is the most important thing in the world, unless it’s a book written about gay teens, or a call to stop bombing children, or an online criticism of my behavior.

10. A)Yeah, right. B) Not the point. Let’s drop the facade of this metaphor and see if the logic still tracks. No one who wants access to nuclear codes should be granted them. Hmm.

11. That and Paul Rudd’s charm? Perhaps recently supplanted by Pedro Pascal’s?

12. https://www.givedirectly.org/2023-ubi-results/

13. Yeah, it’s Musk.

14. https://www.nokidhungry.org/who-we-are/hunger-facts

15.