Binaries

Binaries are a common thing, and nearly everyone hears about them at least once nearly every day. They're usually not called binaries, but they exist. The "he" vs. "she" binary is a familiar one, as is "good" vs. "bad." A lot of parables and mythologies are heavily binary in structure as well, a familiar example being heaven vs. hell. Sun and Moon are often set as opposites as well. You get the idea.

For a long time in human history, nobody really thought of this universal duality from a detached standpoint. "Us" vs. "them" wasn't a construct of any particular cultural context, it was simply a fact of existence. You had your loved ones, and then there was everyone outside that group, and that was that. You didn't think of it as a psychoexistential complex of negative value, because you wouldn't a) have the word "psychoexistential" yet or b) care.

In more recent times, having moved into (arguably) a broader awareness of the world and of each other, people have also taken a step back to observe the things created by our cultures without our awareness. There are endless volumes of articles and entire books on this, but I'll give you a synopsis: humans think in terms of absolute binary duality.

With awareness of this, many people are involved in efforts to solve the issues inherent in a binary system of thought. The field of ethnicity is a prime example. For many centuries race was a starkly binary issue; you were either white, or you were from a group white people were stepping you in some way. Colonialism, in my opinion, represents the modern symptom of a truly ancient human ailment, our inability to easily think in more than two terms. The relationship of master to servant is binary, as is that of any leader to his/her subjects.

Another hotly-contended example of recent times is the gender binary. Debates rage about gender identity, what constitutes a gender, how many genders there are, and so on. I won't delve into it; there is much anger. One thing I do find very interesting, though, is the concept of a "non-binary transgender" person. This type of person identifies with neither gender, and so are said to be non-binary, which might seem to break down our ordinary binary way of thinking (as there are now options outside the two-term mental diagram). I think it should be noted, however, that these individuals simply occupy a binary different from that of the "normal;" where the normative, purely biological binary is man and woman, a "non-binary" transgender person is simply positioned as the second part of a binary where the first term is that original binary itself.

That all got rather tangled, and I could continue to tangle it further, but the (belabored) point is this: humans think in binaries. Man and woman, day and night, right and wrong, earth and sky, left and right, whatever, we think in twos. In a way, evolution and biology contribute to this. We are bilaterally symmetrical creatures, with a left and a right half, and left and right sections to our brain, so two is one of the most primal and accessible numbers to us.

It makes sense, then, that we try to label the transcendent in terms of a binary. In nearly every doctrine, the benevolent deity is opposed by some malefic agent. In Christianity, God and the legions of angels are opposed by his fallen angel Lucifer and his fellow traitors. Zoroastrianism, I think, is the best example of the binary transcendent. In this faith Ahura Mazda, the "Wise Lord," is constantly at odds with Ahriman, the "Destructive Principle." Some traditions have the binary as our transcendent soul against our crude body. Obviously, there are many more examples and they are all more complex than this "greatest hits" approach can do justice to, but the point is made that we ascribe the binary nature of our own thought to the divine.

I'm pretty sure we're wrong.

The problem I have is that binaries are, for the most part, an essentially human construct, a product of the way we think and experience. I mentioned a "psychoexistential complex of negative value"above, and what I mean is this: the way each of us defines his/her self is as not all these other things. Language works the same way. The word for tree refers to a tree; more specifically, it does not refer to all the things that are not a tree.

Binaries are a thought pattern, and sometimes a physical reality. The issue is that I don't believe the divine operates on human terms like these. It doesn't work on any terms, really, because terms are things we tiny mortals create and comprehend. Divinity as I hold it wasn't created, and it defies any attempt we might make to comprehend it. It's us trying to put something incomprehensible and indescribable into some form we can work with, not the thing itself. I really doubt there was any such thing as a literal "War in Heaven;" war is something we do, and beings of transcendent, omnipotent power would have no need to fight one in any way we'd understand. The War that Christians believe in is a human metaphor describing the banishment of Satan and friends from heaven for their (variously interpreted) crimes.

It is, however, purely a human metaphor, because the reality of the divine is this: God, with a little or a big G, and whatever it opposes, whether it's Satan or Ahriman or the titans, are not at all separate. We separate and name things because we are human, and we categorize in order to survive. As far as the divine itself goes, however, all things are merely... aspects of the same, I suppose I would say.

TL;DR We're thinking in two, and we've forgotten everything is really one.