When I searched the title phrase with Google, I got a bunch of quotes and articles about the Bible. That is not what I want to write about in this post because I do not want to go down that rabbit hole.

Said phrase reminded me of the GIF above, where it shows an excerpt from a Star Wars movie, where Anakin Skywalker tells his master Obi-Wan Kenobi that he can either join him in ruling his 'new empire' or die. I doubt you've used the sentence from the GIF "If you're not with me, then you're my enemy" or the title phrase unironically. Neither have people I've talked to, but even if they haven't said it out loud, it may have been their thinking. At least, it definitely was for some of the people I've talked to.

In Chinese there's this saying:「非黑即白」(either black or white). It's used to describe something as a clear-cut binary. In conversations, I've often been placed in this false situation, where I can either completely agree with someone's point, or be interpreted as actively shutting it down.

An example would be:

• A: I feel like having some pizza for lunch.
• B: I prefer sushi, but I can have pizza too.
• A: So you don't like pizza?

Unfortunately, I have been in the place of person B a few times, and it sometimes get frustrating when the other person refuses to recognise that they're drawing inaccurate conclusions. Just because I want sushi more than pizza today doesn't mean I don't like pizza. I've encountered situations like these when I raised an alternative to something another person is advocating for. They, for some reason, interpreted that as me forbidding their idea while that isn't my intention at all.

It gets worse when people assume one must take sides. It's often people have different stances in a topic. It's not uncommon to not agree the whole point someone is making, and I think everyone is free to discuss such differences. That is why it sometimes frustrates me when I'm interrupted with "are you on my side or not?" while voicing my own opinion that doesn't necessarily fit with someone else's. Most things aren't as straightforward as two sides. Just because there are differences between our standpoints doesn't make me your opponent and oppressor.

I, however, must admit that I don't know if I've done this to people around me. The whole reason I recognised this behaviour was because of two courses I took in university. I've tried to minimise such occurrence in my daily conversations, such as using "This is a good idea, but other than that, what if we [insert alternative], which do you think is better?" when offering an alternative. I will try to more cautious in my word usage in the future, and hope that I can avoid this weird thinking of "if you're not with me, then you're against me" mentality.

Anyhow, this is me writing about a pet peeve (kind of) in conversations. May we all converse well.