The Problem

And other subtleties

This MassQ is a problem.

It represents what I see as the greatest problem facing our society today. I wasn’t thinking about any of this when I drew it up, but while MassQing, its meaning became clear.

Composed of a simple repeated pattern, this MassQ depicts a set of white and black stairways, ascending and descending in opposite directions. One stairway’s elevation is the other’s decline. And there it is - the myth upon which our whole social hierarchy rests.

This idea that one group’s benefit is another’s detriment; that the multiplicity of our society can be simplified into a zero-sum game of dog eat dog. This is the problem that I feel has held back our evolution as a species. But I’m getting ahead of myself. Back to this MassQ…

When I restrict my palette to only black and white the MassQs I create always feel more menacing and intense. I think there is a simple reason for this.

By using only black and white I not only remove any interstitial shades of grey, but all color as well. The result is a stark flatness. An oppressive minimalism that distorts facial features and creates an extreme aesthetic that makes for an extreme MassQ.

Like paint, when we oversimplify our thinking into extreme notions of “black vs white”, “us vs them", “good vs bad", we deny ourselves the full spectrum of reality. We create dumbed down, de-natured perspectives devoid of any nuance, context or depth. It is in these distorted and polarized spaces where extremism, violence and suffering form, grow and dominate.

The Reason

The question then is why – why do we continue to create and gravitate toward these polarized ways of thinking in our politics, religions, and societies?

Because it is convenient.

Like most mammals, when we feel threatened we instinctually simplify situations into binary opposites - fight or flight, friend or foe, kill or be killed. This knee-jerk categorization may have helped in the prehistoric savannas of the Serengeti, but in today’s world it more often than not, leads toward more confusion. And ultimately right back toward those polarized places. The decisions we face today are rarely binary. Our problems do not have one right answer (if answer at all), and despite our best efforts to create them, there are no bogeymen to blame, banish or brutalize, only us.

In such a complicated world it can be incredibly tempting and convenient to fall back on our instincts, and to choose to see the world in only two shades. But the cost of that convenience is truth.

Those in power use polarization to manipulate and control, pitting one group against the other to keep both in check, creating white lies and labeling black sheep to corroborate or conceal their coercion.

My MassQs aren’t always “nice”. Sometimes they are ugly, because sometimes that’s how things are. We are in a ugly time, and it is my sincere hope that we do not become ugly with it.

The only way I see to retain our beauty is to embrace the full spectrum of reality. To acknowledge the fullness of who we are, despite the inconvenience it entails.

I am not arguing to get rid of black and white, I am simply inviting us all to acknowledge and embrace the rest of the 99.999999% of life that exists between their polarities. Our very lives depend upon it.