CW FISHER

There are two types of people in this world: those who believe there are two types of people in this world, and those who don't.

If, like me, you belong to one side or the other, you've probably noticed that people split rather easily down the center. There are two symmetrical halves to the body, to the face, to a leaf, a story, an issue, a person, a people. Two sides. It's a law. On the one hand, there's always the other hand.

The assumption that there are two types of people is eminently supportable. The law of twoness says you can't have one without the other: Adam & Eve, Good & Evil, Rich & Poor, Either & Or, Darkness & Light, Republican & Democratic. These things need each other in order to be defined.

It is said that deep awareness of the duality of Being brings oneness, and this is certainly reflected by the divorce rate, just one of the many ways America splits neatly in half. Oneness rarely lasts either, because the moment you reach it you want to run out and tell everybody.

The idea that people will always divide neatly by two is jarring until one understands it is a function of math rather than magic. For those who suspect this is too simplistic, consider the famous twins, "0" and "1," which are the only numbers your computer needs to know in order to do everything it does. If one keeps playing with these opposites — off/on, yes/no, 0/1 — one can arrive at marvelously nuanced pictures of the world.

The problem comes when we stop dividing things by two and accept as unified Truth a rudimentary black & white equation. To say, "There are two types of people: Republicans and Democrats," is factually correct but functionally conflictive because it forces us to take the sum of all that we are and jam it into one cartoon or the other. Are you with the Reds? Or the Blues?

What are the real differences between Republicans and Democrats? Opinions vary, of course, but not by much. Roughly, it's Rich/Poor, White Collar/Blue Collar, Upwardly Mobile/Downwardly Mobile. From there things quickly degrade to Big Fat Loudmouth/Skinny Shrill Whiner.

If you're a Democrat, you're either unemployed or worried you're about to be or know somebody who is, or you're a fabulously wealthy Hollywood star using politics to get on Entertainment Tonight. If you have a career job that involves riding a train to work, you're a Republican. This is because your boss is a Republican, and your boss's boss, and so on. It is career suicide to align yourself with Democrats within a business setting. Shortly after my father retired as a top executive with Sears, he, with my mother at his side, made an announcement. "We're Democrats," he said. "Yikes," said we.