What is The Opposite of a Fork?

It is always tempting to think in dualistic terms: us vs them, black and white, dark and light, work and play, life and death, love and hate. It seems natural that for any X, there’s always the opposite of X.

“If you are not a liberal, then you are a conservative.”

Many of these “opposites” are nonsense. Marvin Minsky in The Society of Mind has a wonderful example, where he asks “what is the opposite of a fork?” Is it a spoon? Or is it a knife? Sometimes “the opposite” simply doesn’t exist.

The way we think in opposites can sometimes be dysfunctional. I don’t want to be poor, so I must be rich. I don’t want to remain unmarried, so I should get married. I don’t want to live anymore (for example), so I must kill myself.

The problem with all these “opposites” is that they are only opposites by definition. They are just words. In life, though, being unmarried or married has much more complex ramifications than the uncomplicated fact of having a marriage certificate or not. Remaining a bachelor entails one set of life patterns, and marriage another. That I don’t want to be a bachelor (for example) does not cleanly lead to the adoption of marriage.

Of course, reality be as it may, my thinking still prefers to ignore it, and think in opposites. So whenever I find myself thinking in opposites that seem too neat, I become suspicious, and remind myself of the question “what is the opposite of a fork?” When abstract ideas work out too neatly, details are invariably sacrificed.

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