Binarity: how and why to move beyond it?

Hello Dancing Fresh Herbs,

Today we felt like restoring the nobility of a notion that has taken quite a beating lately: nuance, in all areas of our lives. Because we keep coming across the sacralisation of radicalism everywhere — but does the world really have to be so binary?

What if true freedom meant stepping out of our boxes?

From a very young age, we were taught early on to pick a side. Team Pikachu or Bulbasaur (well, there's no debate there — Bulbi bulbi love), for or against, good or bad. This habit of sorting everything into two columns didn't just pop up in our algorithms and doesn't stop at fiction: it seeps into our everyday choices, into the way we love, and into the idea we have of a "successful" life.

So we felt like questioning binary thinking: where does it come from, who does it benefit, and above all, what lies between option A and option B set up as the only answers. 

Binary thinking is this reflex that pushes us to reduce a situation to only two possibilities, when in reality it very often contains an infinite number. A consumer choice, an identity, a life trajectory: everything gets compressed into two tiny boxes, as if the world only worked in switch mode: on or off. Learning to spot this mechanism is already the beginning of freeing yourself from it.

Where our instinct to pick a side comes from

Spoiler: from childhood (hello, my dear therapist). The stories we're told often work in opposing pairs: heroines vs villains, friends vs enemies, the one we "must" prefer. The sagas that shaped entire generations were built on this narrative device: two suitors, two camps, and an audience expected to take sides.

It's no coincidence that this mechanism works just as well in adulthood — in its political version, its brand version, its celebrity buzz version. A well-packaged duality grabs attention, sparks debate, and pushes people to take a stance. On social media in particular, nuance doesn't attract much of an audience: algorithms reward what provokes a strong reaction, and nothing works better than a "you're either with us or against us".

One of the huge problems is that this camp logic also works as a fairly effective system of control: as long as we're debating who's right between two options, we stop asking who built those two options, or why there should only be two.

The influence of nuance in everyday life

Some binaries are very real and not in the least bit troubling: you can't be both vegetarian and carnivore at the same meal — that calls for a very clear-cut decision (sword optional ;). The question is therefore not to deny that choices exist, but to spot the false oppositions, the ones presented to us as the only two options.

A simple example: the controversies that set social media ablaze (a celebrity to "defend" or "cancel", a brand you're "for" or "against"). They rarely leave room for the full context, for nuance, or simply for the fact that you might have a mixed opinion — or no opinion at all. Yet having a nuanced opinion, changing your mind, or refusing to pick a side doesn't make you indecisive or "without convictions". It's often the opposite sign: that of having taken the time to step back and gain height in order to arrive at something more considered.

Reclaiming our choices also means accepting that they can sometimes be uncomfortable to explain in a single sentence. A political conviction, a consumer preference, a stance on a social issue: all of this can coexist with variations, doubts, and evolutions. That's not a weakness — it's simply the reflection of a living, breathing mind.

This dichotomous logic also shows up in far more intimate debates: should you be on "team optimist" or "team realist", more introverted or extroverted, more organised or spontaneous? These labels can help you find your bearings, but they become limiting the moment you take them as fixed truths. Most of us navigate between the two depending on the day, our moods, our whims, the people in front of us. Allowing yourself the right to that variation is already stepping out of a box you were barely even asked to choose. 

Love and sexuality: breaking free from constraints 

The sentimental realm is without doubt the one where binary thinking has taken the firmest hold (oh, despair… thank goodness we're here). The love stories we were told for so long were built on a very specific template: two suitors, a choice to make, and loyalty to that choice as proof of ULTIMATE AND UNIQUE love. This template teaches us, often without us realising it, that a person's worth is measured by being "chosen", that le désir plays out like a competition, and that love means making a definitive cut.

This binary vision also colours the way we think about our sexuality. For a long time, the dominant frame of reference offered two boxes (still oh so alive, for goodness' sake): straight or gay, as if attraction could only fit into one or the other. Gold sexuality, romantic love, are now thought of more as a spectrum than as a two-sided impression. Bisexuality, pansexuality, homosexuality, heterosexuality, asexuality, or any nuance between these words: each of these realities is legitimate, and none needs to justify itself against a binary norm.

The same goes for the way we love and live our intimacy: monogamy, open relationships, chosen singlehood, forms of partnership that don't fit a predefined societal definition. None of these configurations is "the right one" by default. What matters is that the chosen framework matches what the people involved want to experience, with full knowledge and full consent, rather than conforming to a model imposed from the outside.

Asking yourself "who presented me with these two options, and why only two?" often allows you to realise that you can ask what you truly desire, rather than what you're supposed to desire.

This reflection naturally extends to pleasure and intimacy. We often grow up with the idea that there is a "right" way to live one's sexuality and a "wrong" one, a normal level of desire and an abnormal one, an acceptable practice and a taboo one. Here again, reality is far richer than a line with two endpoints: each person has their own relationship to desire, which can evolve with time, partners, and life stages. There is no norm to reach, only a listening to oneself to cultivate, without judgement and without an imposed framework.

Done with the sacrosanct All or Nothing

Binary thinking also creeps into the way we evaluate a life. Career or family life, ambition or peace of mind, "having succeeded" or "having failed" at something: these oppositions give the impression that only two outcomes exist, whereas most real trajectories look more like a personal, shifting dosage that reinvents itself at every stage.

You can want a demanding career at one point in your life, then slow down later. You can want a family without giving up your professional ambitions, or choose to have neither without that meaning a lack. You can also completely change course at forty, without it being a failure of the first chapter.

What looks like hesitation or indecision is often nothing more than a healthy refusal to fit into a box too narrow for who we really are.

Injunctions like "you must have started a family by 35" or "you must have succeeded professionally by 30" operate on the same binary principle: on track or off the rails.

They ignore the fact that life trajectories are neither linear nor comparable to one another, and that someone else's timeline was never meant to become yours.

(we're in this together, my queens <3)

The only real question to ask yourself 

What leads me to think in terms of divisions, duality, and dichotomy? 

Right after, try instinctively to sketch out a third option and tell us about it <3

You were never "indecisive" when you refused to pick a side. And even if you were, why on earth would that be a problem? 

Tell us everything in the comments and see you very soon, my wild herbs <3