Binary Structures
This world is made of sound. Our water bodies vibrate with the resonant frequencies of the words we hear and speak. Birds fall from the sky if they are within the sonic shockwave of exploding fireworks. Whales, whose delicate hearing allows them to navigate vast depths through echolocation, rise to the surface dead when sonar weapons are tested or deployed even some distance away from them. The destruction caused by weaponized words careening within us is slower, the verbal vibrations that harm our water bodies take more time, but still we are torn apart.
If our world is made of words, and our words imprison us in abusive ways of being, then our world is sentenced to ongoing oppression.
We understand our world and ourselves through the words we are given to describe us. The English language is predicated on dichotomy, established on the primacy of the binary. All that exists falls on one side, either good or bad, right or wrong, normal or abnormal, loved or hated. Dichotomy is woven into our value systems, identities, and perceptions of reality. What we perceive as “normal” becomes the standard for good and whatever diverges from that perceived normal is “bad.”
This binary tells us that white is what good guys wear and the closest humans can get to holiness, and black is the stuff of macabre comedies and a Friday of destructive consumerism. The word man means both the entire species and a person socialized or identified as male. Man is the standard by which all others are judged, and is set in the binary as good, while female and non-binary folks are measured against man and set in the binary as bad. The paths of livelihood and relationship that give most power to the heads of state and industry are normalized, currently that means corporate employment and heterosexuality give the greatest illusion of security because they are the most normalized, and other ways of living are judged as inferior.
This dichotomy is internalized in the perception of a split between the mind and body. We are taught by Cartesian logic that the mind and body are separate, with the mind exalted and body denigrated. Those who lead with their minds are rewarded, and body-centered folks are lesser.
Monotheism in general and Christianity specifically are the standard by which all other religions/spiritualities are judged. Christianity has been used as the harbinger and enforcer of colonization since before Patrick removed the”snakes” (Celtic people with a nature-based spirituality) from Ireland. Faith-based claims to superiority have enabled dehumanization, exploitation, and theft all over the world, especially from people closer to Black, closer to the wrong side of the color binary.
Human | Nature
We live under the illusion that humans are somehow separate from nature, and since man is the standard, nature must be the black, evil, and frightening opposite. This split shows up in the demonization of the wild, and how we use the word “wild” to mean chaotic, unwanted, and negative. How we fear and hate what is beyond our perceived control or comprehension. Even the word paradise means “walled garden,” a piece of nature humans have sectioned off and made orderly and contained. Civilization is prized, domestication treasured, and the dynamic emergent intelligence of natural spaces and processes is missed, misunderstood, or attacked.
Our bodies are living microcosms of nature, fragments and facets of the holography of natural processes. Our cells mirror the organization of galaxies, our metabolism the cyclical digestivity of forests, our respiration is in harmony with the breathing of trees and holds the birth-death-birth spiralation of all that lives in every inhalation and exhalation.
However often we might forget, or have the sensation of this connection socialized out of us, our bodies will remind us again and again that we are not only intrinsically connected to nature, we are nature. So if we have learned to hate that which seems other than normal, to despise the wild and fear the unfettered, how could we not, by extension, hate our own bodies?
In a society based on this hatred and built on exploitation, we ignore the needs of our personal human and collective ecosystem bodies. We do not trust natural wisdom or honor intuition. We do not ebb with rest or move with rhythm. We believe the falsehood of land ownership and tenancy, that a human can own land and charge other people money to live on it. We obey the tenets of false belonging, we dissociate to navigate the pain of separation from self, and we addictively consume instead of wholeheartedly connect. We mistake labor for purpose and cages for safety. We prioritize capital (money) and the capital (head) part of the body, funneling resources towards capitols (concentrations of fiscal and political power) rather than distributing to all the interconnected parts and people. We think beauty, self-advocacy, and community are luxuries. And we believe we can hurt other people, human, plant, animal, or bio-region, without also ingesting that harm.
When we do not recognize the value of another person it is easier to not care about their suffering, and even inflict suffering without feeling remorse. Language creates meaning in our minds. If we have been taught or decided that someone is invaluable, if we have placed them on the “bad” side of the dichotomy with our thoughts and words, then we can be justified in not caring about their feelings or their lives.
Expanding Perception
Nature holds binary, movement is born of polarity. Night follows day, growth begets decay. The darkness of space holds the bright stars. Even the transmission of impulses in a nervous system requires the cellular exchange of polarized chemicals. Where the destruction lies is in the assignment of value. When we decide some aspect, usually what we have designated as “normal,” is good and its opposite is bad then we get lost in destructive dichotomies. When the “other” loses personhood in our perception, our own inhumanity will be on display. Our work is to remember and reunite ourselves and each other. We act in accordance with our beliefs, which are shaped by our inner monologue and outer dialogue.
If we can shift our words we can change our beliefs, change how we identify, and change how we perceive and treat other living beings. Not because it is the “good” thing to do, but because we recognize our shared personhood and inescapable interconnectivity.
We step towards wholeness by breathing beyond constructs of good or bad, white or black, and right or wrong. Part of learning to weave togetherness includes learning to embrace polarity without dichotomy, tension without battle.
Learning to hold seemingly opposing ideas, truths, realities, energies, and colors without valuing one over the other, without putting them on opposing sides.
How do we allow for the possibility of both/and beyond either/or?
Can we let go of the need to have an enemy, can we stop playing the roles of dominator or subject, winner or loser?
Can we let discomfort quake and crack us into a deeper foundation of truth? Can we hold paradox, and let that become our portal?
The binary doesn’t need to be destroyed, but rather blown open and expanded to reflect the complexity of our ecological and celestial kin. I stand for a queerness that is inextricably informed by interspecies solidarity—by lichen, dusk chorus, swamps, coral and cryptobiotic soil. Queerness is… a devotional practice of decentering our humancentricism to continually expand our co-liberation and remember that our queerness is a disruptive/remediative fruit of the earth. ~ Pinar and So Sinopoulos-Lloyd of Queer Nature
May we find that place of both, and.