The Realm of Gradients

Most of us tend to think in binary terms so that we are able to make judgements throughout our life. We immediately judge in black and white terms like good or bad, true or false, friend or enemy, spiritual or secular. This tendency is stronger in some of us than others and personality typologies like the Myers-Briggs point to this in the Judgement vs Perceiving traits. The perceiving or 'P' personality tends to do a little better with the muddy grayness of real life situations and also struggle when it is time to make decisions. I had a friend who could never make up his mind and would always say "Its because my P-ness is so big." I still think that's hilarious!  F. Scott Fitzgerald wrote that  "The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposing ideas in mind at the same time and still retain the ability to function." Do we think in such a way as to make allowances for paradoxes and  gradients? There are a lot of places that we (I) might benefit from better learning to suspend judgement and "think gray". 

I heard a man ask his wife, who I knew to be somewhat dishonest, if it was wrong for him to expect her to do what she says. I had this strange moment where I somewhat mockingly thought to myself "No it isn't wrong but it is foolish." That thought has been ringing in my head since. I keep thinking about how many things in my own life are not wrong but are quite foolish and unhealthy. I have been thinking that it might be wise for me to start using these spectrums such as foolish and wise or healthy and unhealthy instead of right and wrong for a while. Maybe it is an over correction but, as Aristotle once pointed out, a carpenter straightens a warped board by bending it in the other direction. Foolish and wise are not either/or decisions like good and bad. These terms will help me in thinking about decisions along a continuum rather than in the binary terms i tend toward.