Are you Pro-Skub or Anti-Skub? 🤔
🤷♂️ Don't know what Skub is? DOESN'T MATTER!
Our brains have already filled in the answer to this question with the answer to another question it has already answered at some other point in time because it doesn't like ambuguity and would prefer to hold an incomplete or incorrect thought than no thought at all.
🤯 Is Skub complex or simple? DOESN'T MATTER!
Our brains will naturally oversimplify any complexity to create the illusion of simplicity because simplicity requires less attention, energy and cognitive load.
⚖ Are there other positions to take other than being Pro or Anti Skub? DOESN'T MATTER!
False dichotomies naturally emerge as a result of oversimplifying. We then take a position on one side or the other of this framing due to influence, manipulation, social pressure, rigid beliefs, or any of the other things that make us nervous and gulpy.
Once we're locked into a false dichotomy - think Waterfall vs. Agile, Democrat vs. Republican, Tastes Great vs. Less Filling - we then we get overly emotionally invested in what is essentially a made-up argument that discounts and discards nuance, diversity of thought, and deeper understanding.
☯ So are you Pro-Skub or Anti-Skub? DOESN'T MATTER!
Skub is a completely made up concept from the classic Internet comic The Perry Bible Fellowship, created by artist Nicholas Gurewitch. He captures in a 4-panel comic what we witness every day in posts and comments on LinkedIn.
But just like most of the either-or, this-or-that, my-way-or-the highway type shallow, dichotomous thinking that divides us online or IRL, choosing one side or another when presented with a strict and socially constructed dualism is a choice we don't have to forced to make.
If we just put on our thinking caps for a hot second and see that false dichotomies are traps that lend themselves to bad decisions and ultimately bad behavior, maybe take a step back when you feel the emotions starting to rush in and consider that there may be more to an issue than the proverbial two sides of the proverbial coin you're being presented with?