The Binary Behind Our Inconsistency Doesn’t Harm – Unawareness Does

I no longer believe human beings are meant to be consistent.

We are not designed to be purely good or purely bad, generous or selfish, kind or cruel. We are built as contradictions, carrying opposing impulses in the same breath. The mistake is not in the duality itself, but in our refusal to admit it.

At our core, we are both selfless and selfish at once. We want to care, to protect, to give, to love beyond ourselves. And at the same time, we want to survive, to be chosen, to be seen, to take what secures us. These impulses do not cancel each other out; they coexist. Often, they are intertwined so tightly that it becomes impossible to tell where altruism ends and self-interest begins.

Even our most generous acts are rarely pure. We give because it feels right, because it quiets guilt, because it affirms our identity as “good,” because love feels safer when it is reciprocated. Likewise, our selfish acts are not always rooted in malice; many are born from fear, scarcity, or the memory of being deprived. What we call “evil” is often an unhealed survival instinct that has grown sharp from use.

I see the binary most clearly when I look at myself.

There are moments when I am deeply generous, when I give without calculation, when I want nothing more than to ease someone else’s pain. And then there are moments when I am guarded, withholding, self-protective, even cold. For a long time, I judged myself for this shift, as if one version of me were the truth and the other a failure. Now I’m beginning to understand that both belong to me.

I want connection, but I also fear it. I want to be seen, but I flinch when I am. I can love intensely and, in the same breath, pull away to preserve myself. What looks like contradiction is often survival speaking in different languages

I am capable of warmth and distance, devotion and withdrawal. I can be soft and sharp, open and defensive, trusting and suspicious. These are not flaws competing for dominance; they are responses shaped by experience. They surface depending on whether I feel safe or threatened, held or alone.

I notice how my selflessness sometimes comes from a genuine place of care, and sometimes from a quiet hope that giving will secure my place, that if I am good enough, useful enough, loving enough, I won’t be left. And when I feel that balance tip, when giving starts to feel like erasure, selfishness steps in, not as cruelty, but as a boundary I didn’t know how to name sooner.

The alter ego is not an external monster hiding in the shadows. It is the part of us that knows how to do what the polite self cannot. It speaks the truths we silence, desires what we deny, and acts when restraint becomes unbearable. Society teaches us to exile this part, to label it dangerous, shameful, or immoral. But repression does not erase it. It only makes it louder in moments of stress, power, or anonymity

Good and evil are not opposing camps we choose between; they are forces we constantly negotiate within ourselves. The same person who loves deeply can also wound deeply. The same hand that nurtures can withhold. The same heart that empathizes can rationalize harm when it feels threatened. This is not hypocrisy; it is humanity.

What becomes dangerous is not the presence of darkness, but the denial of it. People who insist on their own goodness often lack awareness of their capacity to harm. They outsource their shadow to others and become blind to the damage they cause. In contrast, those who acknowledge their darker impulses are often more careful, more ethical, because they know what they are capable of.

Morality, then, is not about purity. It is about consciousness. It is about noticing the moment where self-interest overtakes compassion, where fear overrides empathy, where power dulls responsibility, and choosing to intervene. Not because we are saints, but because we are aware.

Perhaps the goal is not to eliminate the binary within us, but to hold it. To accept that we are capable of tenderness and cruelty, generosity and greed, loyalty and betrayal. And to understand that every day, in small and large ways, we are choosing which side we feed.

What I am learning is that goodness is not about always choosing others over myself, and selfishness is not about the absence of care. Both can exist in the same decision. Both can be honest. The real work is noticing why I am acting; whether from fear, love, habit, or awareness.

I am not trying to become one consistent version of myself anymore. I am trying to become a conscious one. Someone who knows her edges. Someone who recognizes when she is protecting herself, and when she is hiding. Someone who understands that light and shadow are not enemies inside me, but parts that need to be in conversation.

This is what it means, I think, to be human: not to purify ourselves of contradiction, but to live responsibly with it.

We are not divided because we are limited.
We are divided because we are alive.
And the binary becomes gentler when noticed.

Thoughts by Christine Ogolla

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