In many ancient societies, people employed "both/and" thinking far more than "either/or" thinking.
Symbols had multiple meanings, context mattered at least as much as content, and questions had multiple "right" answers.
Modern people can really learn a lot from this.
Conversation
Replying to
Do you think our materialist perspective is at the core of our transition to such strong duality? What other aspects seem strongly relevant here?
1
Replying to
I think agriculture and the onset of ownership created a need for either/or thinking. Either you owned the land, or someone else did. Before that, no one owned nature.
1
4
This Tweet was deleted by the Tweet author. Learn more
Not sure if this argument is entirely as correct as it is compelling.
As for simple societies (correct dichotomy, IMO, is simple vs. complex, not ancient vs. modern - complexity is unevenly distributed across history and even today), a lot of them seem pre-discriminatory.
1
That is, "and/both" and "either/or" here function as a complex society filter on a supreme indifference to speculation.