![\"Image\"](\"https:\/\/sites.smith.edu\/religious-spiritual-life\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/126\/2013\/10\/map_syria2.jpg\")
<\/a><\/p>\nWhen I was in college, we used to talk a lot about \u201cthe binary.\u201d I don\u2019t know if it is still in use in the common lexicon\u2014but think it is still associated with things we talk about a lot with respect to gender identification and other social identities. We disavow a binary construction of gender, culture, and race, and we recognize that either\/or descriptions don\u2019t fit or do service to any human being. We see a spectrum, a range of positions of what is possible, each based on the individual qualities and multiple factors that inform and reflect who we are\u2014we recognize intersectionality. In the dominant discourse however, in politics and elsewhere, \u2018binary\u201d constructions are still the norm.<\/p>\n
I have been thinking about this concept with respect to U.S military response in Syria. Regardless of my confusion as to what to think about the Obama administration\u2019s oscillation on the subject, I was once again stuck by the \u201cbinary\u201d choice that was initially laid out for us as it most often is with respect to military intervention and lack thereof. While there is in fact a \u201cspectrum\u201d of options; as we now know as Obama did go to congress to glean their approval after initially proposing a unilateral executive order for military intervention; the initial rhetoric was\u00a0 the familiar \u201ceither \/or.\u201d\u00a0 Kerry, after laying out the context in Syria, said:<\/p>\n
And make no mistake, in an increasingly complicated world of sectarian and religious extremist violence, what we choose to do or not do matters in real ways to our security. Some cite the risks of doing things, but we need to ask, what is the risk of doing nothing?\u201d<\/i><\/a> Kerry was using as his reference point the all too familiar violence\/ reframing from violence binary here– fight or flight– and this is the paradigm we are all most familiar with. Another form of \u201cflight\u201d is to \u201cfreeze\u201d\u2014which seems to be describing Kerry\u2019s view of what we are doing if we don\u2019t use military action. In politics, a binary construction of decision making is still the pervasive construct.<\/p>\n We are still talking about binaries in college now, their origins in the parts of enlightenment rationalism that have failed us, and the ways this generation is called to stretch , deconstruct, and configure what they have defined, right? Contemplative Practices (meditation, prayer, spiritual practices, even writing and various art forms) and much of what is taught in the liberal arts curriculum itself exists to help us learn to think and feel beyond a binary construction. Fight or flight exists deep in us, in our physiology.\u00a0But so does the capacity to move beyond the physiology to the imagination\u2014<\/i>that is part of what it means to be human. And to be educated means to always look deeply in to what is before you, to never except at the truth exactly as it has been presented by the mainstream.<\/p>\n So let\u2019s look at the dominant voices when it comes to war and peace. The US talks about security and freedom. But being constrained by an ideological binary in which military action\/ inaction are the only options can never bring true freedom, can it? Aren\u2019t political and ideological pluralism part of living in a liberal democracy, and isn\u2019t the\u00a0heart<\/i>\u00a0of a liberal democracy putting human rights at the center of all discourse? Thus striking that our secretary of state can speak as if to\u00a0not<\/i>\u00a0strike Syrian is to \u201cdo nothing.\u201d<\/i><\/p>\n In the words of Adrienne Rich,\u00a0\u201cWar is an absolute failure of imagination.\u201d<\/i>\u00a0It is imagination that moves us beyond what is most primitive, beyond our \u201cfight or flight\u201d impulses. It is our imagination that allows us to have empathy and think outside the boxes that have been created for us, with respect to things like social and cultural identity. Let\u2019s use it to explore the urgent question of war and global violence, let\u2019s see how wide and vast and rich and multifaceted the space between fight and flight might be.<\/p>\n Author:\u00a0Matilda Cantwell<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" When I was in college, we used to talk a lot about \u201cthe binary.\u201d I don\u2019t know if it is still in use in the common lexicon\u2014but think it is still associated with things we talk about a lot with … Continue reading
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