I have been thinking about the categories that I use to place other people in neat little boxes.

Do I come by my tribal attitudes naturally – as part of an evolutionally acquired trait that encouraged survival – or is my inclination to divide the world into categories of “us” and “them” learned? It’s probably some of both.

I am a categorizing creature. I parse my experience in the world – dividing and dividing.

I am drawn to binary contrasts. This simplistic mental structure is somehow, comforting.

Yet I find peril as well as comfort in binary thinking.

Sometimes it can be…Philosophical

There are two kinds of people in this world: good people who make things better and bad people who make things worse.

There are two kinds of people in this world. There are hammers and nails. You decide which one you want to be.

Paraphrasing George Bernard Shaw: The reasonable person adapts themself to the world; the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to themself. Therefore, all progress depends on unreasonable people.”

It can be a warning…

Mankind is divided into two categories: Those who overestimate Condeezza, and those who don’t know her. Natural selection quickly removed those who underestimated her.

From Sweeney Todd:

Because in all of the whole human race, Mrs. Lovett,
There are two kinds of men and only two.
There’s the one staying put in his proper place
And the one with his foot in the other one’s face!
Look at me, Mrs. Lovett, look at you!

It can be Misanthropic:

There are two kinds of people in this world. And I don’t like them.

There are two types of people in the world: people who suck, and wait a minute, there is no second category— everybody sucks.

It can be situational:

There are two kinds of people in the world. Those that enter a room and turn the television set on, and those that enter a room and turn the television set off

There are two types of gun-owners: Those who have had a gun go off by accident, and those who WILL have a gun go off by accident.

Humorous

You know, there are two types of people in the world; people that get it and people that don’t. And the people that don’t get it know who they are

Many are Mathematical:

There are three types of people in this world: those who can count, and those who can’t.

There are two kinds of people in the world. There are those who can extrapolate from incomplete data…

There are two kinds of people in the world. 7/4 of people don’t understand fractions and the other half really just don’t care.

There are 10 types of people in the world. Those who understand binary and those who don’t.

Probably not the last word on the subject, but there are two types of people in the world: Those who divide people into two types and those that don’t.

My mind was sent down this rabbit hole when I thought about what a boss of mine, Rudy, said with conviction many years ago: There are two types of people in the world. Those who give a damn and those who don’t.

Rudy had something here.

As a Humanist, I give a damn. I care about others and the world around me.

By attributing worth and dignity to others, I am invested in their wellbeing.

If I am able to see “others” as “other selves”, unified and deeply connected, I am moved toward seeking equality and justice for everyone.

My humanism is connected to the future of humanity and I want to know what I can do now to build a sustainable future.

There is much that I can do but so much else that I feel powerless to control.

The cliché that you cannot control what happens but you can control how you deal with it rings all too true for me.

Ultimately, I must cope – and if I can do so with equanimity, so much the better.

I struggle in the face of difficulties to remain positive, for after all, this binary construction seems to be true to me:

There are two types of people in the world, those who see their glass as half-full and those who see it as half-empty.

I try to stay on the half-full side. Please nudge me back in that direction if I stray into pessimism.