We’ve all heard the classic example of the loaded question, “Did you stop beating your wife?” While most would recognize the ruse for what it is, it still succeeds in tripping people up.

The question is designed so that its underlying presumption goes unchallenged, if the person being asked is predisposed to giving a “yes” or “no” answer.

In Japanese, there is a third one-word answer that a person could give, where “hai” means “yes”, and “iee” means “no”, the third option would be “mu”, which means “impossible”. It’s a one-word way to say that the question doesn’t apply. The English equivalent could be “wrong”, which could be considered a shorthand way to say that “The question is wrong.”

This is not the only way that dichotomous thinking can influence people. Another would be to split the world in two, as many cults often do.

For example, you might be asked what your market philosophy is, “Marxism or capitalism?” In most cases, you’d probably say “capitalism”, whereas where your life depends on the answer, you’d probably say “Marxism”.

Turns out, the term “capitalism” doesn’t much narrow it down, because it’s a broad term that encompasses many economic schools of thought. The term “capitalism” is as popular as it is because Marxism has succeeded in dividing the world into two, and since then, they’ve succeeded in getting the rest of us to use their language.

Upon learning of this, I had a bit of an economic identity crisis, as I’ve suddenly found myself learning about a handful of economic schools of thought, which would have fallen into the “capitalist” compartment in the thinking of those influenced by Marxism’s memetic legacy.

For those curious, I’m not strongly committed to any economic philosophy, but I do recognize that the Austrian school has some interesting ideas. The Keynesian system embraced by much of the world is problematic, but I’m willing to live non-belligerently where it’s the order of the day, even if I were to point out its problems.

But back to the topic at hand, the dichotomy of Marxism vs Capitalism is one of many ways that the world is oversimplified, and can obscure some of the nuanced ideas that may be worth considering.

Another example that I could think of off the top of my head is the idea of the political right versus the political left. It’s a trick that Liberalism has used to make “the right” appear to be monolithic, when in reality, “conservatism” is most ideas outside of liberalism.

When you understand this, it becomes much easier to comprehend why the right has often struggled to develop a coherent message, while the left has done so much better at organizing. And you’ll recognize their carefully-manufactured image of being a bunch of underdogs for the ruse that it is.

So, what’s the point of this thought exercise? Odds are, you can think of another false dichotomy that’s relevant to you that may have been carefully-designed to limit your choices or perspective. Or it might be that there’s one that you might not have thought of, yet.

I suspect that there’s a great many people whose minds are shackled, though they’ve been led to believe that they have been freed.