This is hidden brain.
I'm Shankar Vedanta.
More than 100 years ago, a danish man named Edgar Rubin created an image.
It became so popular you can still buy posters of it today.
The image is known as Rubens Vase.
If you google it right now, you might see a black vase against a white background.
But if you stare at it, another image suddenly jumps out.
Not a vase, but two faces in profile, gazing at each other across a black background.
Rubin wasn't an artist, he was a psychologist.
And he was interested in how the mind deciphers visual cues.
There are many versions of Rubens ways.
There's one where you see either a duck or a rabbit, another where you see either a young girl or an old woman.
The point is that it's either or.
Your mind alternates between seeing one picture or the other, but not both.
I've often tried to make myself see both the ways and the faces at the same time.
It's really hard to do, but if I succeed, it's usually only for a moment.
Then my mind snaps back into the groove of seeing either one picture or the other.
Edgar Rubins creation is a metaphor for our times in so many ways, across so many domains, we are pulled toward either or thinking.
Are the people around us friends or foes, sinners or saints?
Superheroes or supervillains?