A Bull Against the Tyranny of Either/Or
HEAR YE, HEAR YE, and also do not hear ye, for both are permitted under the present administration.
On this the 5th of Confusion, YOLD 3192, being the holyday of the apostle SRI SYADASTI, I — Pope Fulmina the Vehement, who am infallible in some sense and full of beans in some other sense — do issue this Bull against the most ancient and most boring of tyrannies: the Tyranny of Either/Or.
You know the tyrant. He wears a clipboard. He asks you, with the patience of a man timing an egg, whether the statement is TRUE or FALSE, and offers exactly two boxes, and stands there, and waits. He is the favorite mask of Greyface — that dismal accountant who, in the dim centuries before our calendar began counting backward from him, declared that disorder is evil and life is a serious business requiring forms in triplicate. Either/Or is his catechism. Pick one. Only one. There are only two. Be reasonable.
I will not be reasonable. I have a hat for exactly this purpose.
The Heresy of Two
Consider that the tyrant offers you two answers and calls it freedom. Two! As though the cosmos, that staggering apple-spangled riot, could be tucked between a yes and a no like a sandwich between bread. The Law of Fives laughs at him. The Sacred Chao spins, and it is neither all Hodge nor all Podge but the both-at-once forever, and it does not consult a checkbox.
For Sri Syadasti looked upon the universe and counted not two answers but seven, and the seventh was a wink.
Hear now the Seven-Fold Predication, which I command you to read aloud at any clipboard-bearer until he relents:
All affirmations are true in some sense, false in some sense, meaningless in some sense, true and false in some sense, true and meaningless in some sense, false and meaningless in some sense, and true and false and meaningless in some sense.
That is seven. Count them on your fingers, and when you run out of fingers, you will understand why we use the other hand.
The Decree
Therefore, by the authority vested in me by myself, on a dare, I hereby DECREE:
- That "maybe" is restored to its throne, with full back pay.
- That anyone demanding a simple yes-or-no shall first define simple, and we shall be here a while.
- That the binary be permitted to keep its job, but only as one of the seven, and made to wear a name tag.
You who are reading this on a bus seat, or between the pages of a library book where you mistook it for a bookmark: you have now been drafted. There is no checkbox for declining. There is, however, a Pope Card — and you, too, are Pope.
This Bull is binding in some sense, meaningless in some sense, and both at once, which is the only kind worth issuing.
Hail Eris. All hail Discordia. Affirm everything; commit to nothing; mean it sevenfold.