Recently I was conversing with a work friend, whom I’ll name Eli. Eli and I were both discussing philosophical topics as we often do when the need came up for us to draw a straight line on a page. Instinctively, Eli reaches for the transparent plastic ruler. He closes one eye to ensure a laser-like focus, his breathing slows as he carefully maneuvers the ruler upon the page just right. Eli methodically drags the tip of the pen along the edge of the ruler with just enough pressure, resulting in the perfect line. The marked edge on the paper was of superb quality, in terms of both straightness and length. Eli has drawn the consummate straight line that all other lines should aspire to be. Eli has just put on a workshop of drawing lines.
Myself, on the other hand, abide by none of these algorithmic behaviors when called upon to do this task. I grab my pen as if I were a Jedi knight wielding a lightsaber. I have been cajoled by my valued colleagues throughout my career for plunging the pen tip onto the page and streaking the lightsaber across the tree-based canvas without breaking a sweat. The result is most often a line with a curvature to it. Other instances, it creates a straight-line connected to another with an obtusely angled bend that allows it to conform to the space provided. No two lines I have drawn across a page are exactly alike; the reproducibility of each line is forfeited by my seemingly reckless approach. I have disgraced all of my K-8 art teachers.
However, there is one thing that is often overlooked in within the line-drawing community; Eli’s lines and my lines have still accomplished the same exact task. There is no functional difference between the line drawn by my well-groomed, pressed-shirt and ever-practical colleague Eli and my own line. The techniques we employed are seemingly a matter of preference, no matter how diametrically opposed they are to one another. However, that did not stop Eli and I from speculating about the differences in our approaches. We mused that there must be two types of people on this Earth; those who draw lines with rulers (the careful planners, the one’s with an eye for detail and who take pride in their work) and one’s who freehand (people who thrive among the chaos, the bold ones unafraid of a less-traveled path, the one’s not bogged down by social conventions and order). Eli and chuckled at this surface-level observation for a moment or two before we continued our workday.
However, there is on important distinction that both Eli and I failed to go over in our line-drawing escapades; we were both dead wrong. Sure, line-drawing is a binary task, you either grab a flexible ruler or you don’t. Upon diving deeper however, one cannot fully determine the psyche of someone based purely on how they draw lines on a page. Such a claim would be ludicrous. Within the human experience lies a multitude of quirks among us, not to mention that someone with Eli’s line-drawing tendencies could also be reckless in other aspects of life. Put another way, the ruler-grabbing community could hypothetically also be the types of people who leave pizza boxes lying around their home for days on end, or the type of person who waits until April 14th to file their taxes. Conversely, the free-hand club could be meticulous planners with finances or are habitually 15 minutes early to appointments. There are countless examples in modern day society that try to ascribe a set of personality traits to people performing mundane tasks, like how they load toilet paper onto a dispenser, to how soon before a turn they choose to signal while driving, to how they prepare a peanut butter-jelly sandwich. To attempt to label anyone with such broad strokes not only confuses correlation with causation, but also is just intellectually lazy.
The false dichotomy is a logical fallacy that asserts that there are only two possible choices in a given scenario, when in reality more than two exist. A common example from modern politics is the argument of You can fund education or you can fund welfare. This is a false dichotomy because there is a plethora of options to fund with tax dollars, such as infrastructure, the military, healthcare and so much more. Furthermore, a nation can simply fund both welfare and education, without being forced into an all-or-nothing scenario that the false dichotomy fallacy funnels people into.
Another weakness of this line of thinking is that it forces people to ignore nuance and other important contexts. The saying There are two types of people: those who say “I Can” and those who say “I Can’t” and they are both right serves as a good example of this. While the proper mindset is important, the way this argument is presented makes it seem like mindset is all there is to success. To put it another way, that saying boils life down to a single-variable equation, like a high-school algebra problem. However, as the real-world has an endless number of variables, many of which create a domino effect when altered. The history of both Wall Street and Silicon Valley are littered with positive-minded companies and CEO’s that went bankrupt for a multitude of reasons; the venture capital spigot ran dry, the product failed upon launch, supply chain issues and so much more. The false dichotomy fallacy, more often than not, ignores the ecosystem around any given situation almost entirely.
While this may be just my attempt at rationalizing my poor line-drawing habits, I hope my perfect driving record, punctuality to meetings and careful consideration of my neighbors in my apartment complex when deciding on a good time to vacuum the carpet overrides the free-handing lines of my youth. The false dichotomy introduced earlier would otherwise have condemned me to a life of sloppiness and negligence in all areas of day-to-day activity. Conversely, we as humanity would do well to not hold Eli to the impossible standard of perfection-through neatness, as the constant expectation of diligence would certainly lead him to missing out on the spontaneity of life. Eli can draw perfect lines with rulers and stop to smell the roses once in awhile or have an off day.
There are two types of people in this world, and they would both be better served avoiding false dichotomies.
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