Dichotomous Thinking

THE ART OFCLEAR THINKING community take out a procession. Raising slogans, the procession enters a locality that is inhabited by members of another community. Thinking the slogans to be directed against them, the people of this locality get agitated. As a result, there is a clash between the members of the two communities, which ends in enormous loss of life and property. Reflect carefully on this example. Because of their particular way of thinking, the inhabitants of the locality through which the procession passed, see the matter in such a way that only two options seem plausible to them: either to tolerate the objectionable slogans or else to try to stop the processionists from raising the slogans. They think that tolerating the slogans would be tantamount to cowardice and accepting dishonour while trying to stop the processionists from raising the slogans seems to them an act of bravery. And so, they decide to take action to try to stop the sloganeering in order to attain their desired objective. But the result, in actual practice, of their not being willing to tolerate the sloganeering turns out to be that they have to tolerate bloody rioting instead, in which they suffer immense loss. The cause for this devastating outcome is dichotomous thinking. Had the inhabitants of the locality been aware that there exists also a third option that is possible for them to avail of, they might have saved themselves from having to face the terrible loss caused by the rioting. This third option