Since the beginning of time, there have been two kinds of librarians: those who divide librarians into two kinds and those who don’t. Librarians who divide librarians into two kinds have never met a false dichotomy we didn’t like. We have an easy, simple vision of the world that’s very attractive for us and others, because reducing the irreducible complexity of existence to a series of false dichotomies simultaneously reduces the effort required for serious thought, and some of us are too busy running libraries to have time for serious thought.
The false dichotomy is a useful thing and beautiful in its simplicity. A scary thought is that there might be thousands of librarians motivated by a variety of values. It’s hard work to understand all of the values, much less the fact that even a single librarian can have multiple motives for action. Fortunately, we don’t have to understand it. We can just divide librarians using various false dichotomies. I’m dividing them into librarians who divide librarians into two kinds and those who don’t because it’s just a lot easier for me to understand the world that way.
Some people believe the world is a messy and complex place, and that even the world of libraries is complex. Those people frighten and confuse me. They believe that individual librarians have a set of sometimes conflicting values whose adherence requires balance, compromise, and negotiation. They might believe, for example, that librarians should act for the good of their individual library users, for the good of their particular libraries, and for the good of all libraries. That’s a lot to think about, though, and I prefer to make things easier on myself. Librarians either divide librarians into two kinds or they don’t, and if they don’t then they’re probably trying to force you to think about something complex that you really don’t have the time or inclination to think about. So don’t think about it.
It’s easy. I don’t. I just look out and see the two kinds of librarians. One kind, the dividers, are like me. They like things clean and simple. The great thing about such simplicity is how much time it saves me. Let’s say I encounter librarians writing or saying things that imply they aren’t dividers. With a wave of my mental hand I easily dismiss them, because if they’re not dividers like me, then they’re not worth paying attention to. If I’m being really generous, as I am here, I might warn other librarians to avoid them as well. Don’t pay attention to the non-dividers. They’re bad.
It gets even easier. Since I can tell almost immediately when a librarian isn’t a divider like me, I can warn everybody about how bad they are without considering any evidence whatsoever. You know who aren’t dividers? People who spend their precious time on things like “citing sources” or “critical thinking” when they’re dividing librarians using false dichotomies. Ugh. I have better things to do. You might think that if I had any respect for my audience I might cite some sources while making grand generalizations about librarians. But no, I assume my audience is as simplistic as I am and that they’ll fall for the same fallacies that I do. Besides, citing sources takes work, and I prefer to write essays the way first-year college students write them. Hence my opening sentence and my complete lack of evidence for my claims.
Regardless, since I know that the world is divided between librarians who divide librarians into two kinds and those that don’t, and since I know that librarians who don’t divide librarians into two kinds disagree with me, and since I know that librarians who disagree with me are wrong and bad, then I don’t have to even examine them closely or provide reasons why they’re wrong and bad. The very fact that they don’t divide librarians into two kinds is proof enough that they can’t be trusted. Wrong and bad librarians like them hate libraries and their users. I can just dismiss them, and I implore you to do the same.
If we both share the same false dichotomy, that saves us from having to understand or engage with librarians who are wrong and bad because they disagree with us. If we don’t share the same false dichotomy and you dare to criticize me, I have a way of dealing with that as well. I’ll repeat my false dichotomies and fallacious arguments ad nauseum until you get so tired of responding to my circular arguments that you just give up. I can copy and paste my claims into a comment box as many times as necessary. Really, it’s no trouble. And if I get the last word in, then I win the argument, because that’s how the Internet works.
You might think I’d come up with some arguments to defend my own beliefs instead of creating a false dichotomy, aligning myself with one side of it, poisoning the well against the other side, and hoping people will be gullible enough to have a discussion on my terms. But that’s hard work. Fallacious reasoning is much easier than critical thinking, it’s a lot more fun, and I probably wouldn’t be able to tell the difference anyway. That’s why I like to keep things simple and easy.
Since things are so simple and easy, I don’t know why every librarian isn’t a divider like me. I could try to find out, I guess, but that would require understanding the values and motivations of the non-dividers, and probably engaging them at their own level, and if I do that things aren’t so clean and simple anymore, which means I’d be wasting time I could otherwise spend dividing the world into two kinds of librarians. If I was going to make that much effort, I might as well be a non-divider, but non-dividers are wrong and bad so I wouldn’t want to be like them. My argument is so airtight I might be suffocating myself.
You forgot to include dissembling and vague statements about how there aren’t really two kinds of librarians, and how you don’t mean to suggest that one is bad (even though the entire rest of your writing makes those two exact points).
That way, you could cite the vague dissemblances whenever someone disagrees with you or provides a counterargument. It makes it even easier to win on the internet!
I did indeed. Thanks for the reminder.
No, no, no — the way you win on the internet is not by citing your opponent at all, or even engaging with his actual statements and arguments. Instead, you engage with caricatures of his arguments, and accuse him of meaning the exact opposite of what he actually says. That way, no matter what he says, you still win — if he says something that undermines your interpretation, you just accuse him of “dissembling.” _That_, my friend, is how you win on the internet. (And you get bonus points if you avoid ever naming your opponent, linking to his essay, or quoting from it. Additional bonus points if, while failing to do any of those things, you implicitly criticize him for failing to “cite sources.” See how easy this can be?)
It’s come to my attention that some people think this blog post is somehow related to a librarian named Rick Anderson. Nothing could be further from the truth. I don’t see how anyone could read Anderson’s work and see any similarities at all, and I definitely never intended this blog post to be interpreted in any way as a response to anything he has written or said. It would be nice if people stopped misreading me in this manner so we could get to a fruitful conversation about what I really said.
And it’s come to my attention that some people think my response to Matt Ruen is somehow related to a librarian named Wayne Bivens-Tatum. How people could have come to such a ridiculous conclusion is beyond me, but you know how people are.
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