binary oppositions
With so much many other things demanding to be read, what am I doing rereading Gregory Bateson?
When we invoke bi-polarity as a means of handling differentiation within society without foregoing some notion of common character structure, we considered only the possibility of simple bi-polar differentiation. Certainly this pattern is very common in Western culture; take, for instance, Republican-Democrat, political Right-Left, sex differentiation, God and the Devil, and so on. These peoples even try to impose a binary pattern upon phenomena which are not dual in nature - youth versus age, labour versus capital, mind versus matter - and, in general, lack the organizational devices for handling triangular systems; the inception of any 'third' party is always regarded, for example, as a threat to our political organization. This clear tendency towards dual systems ought not, however, to blind us to the occurrence of other patterns.
- Gregory Bateson, 'Morale and National Character,' in Steps to an Ecology of Mind
When we invoke bi-polarity as a means of handling differentiation within society without foregoing some notion of common character structure, we considered only the possibility of simple bi-polar differentiation. Certainly this pattern is very common in Western culture; take, for instance, Republican-Democrat, political Right-Left, sex differentiation, God and the Devil, and so on. These peoples even try to impose a binary pattern upon phenomena which are not dual in nature - youth versus age, labour versus capital, mind versus matter - and, in general, lack the organizational devices for handling triangular systems; the inception of any 'third' party is always regarded, for example, as a threat to our political organization. This clear tendency towards dual systems ought not, however, to blind us to the occurrence of other patterns.
- Gregory Bateson, 'Morale and National Character,' in Steps to an Ecology of Mind