What is Dualism?

Dualism is a metaframe, through which people see the world divided into the forces of good and evil. Manichaeism gave dualism a boost into Christianity.

Richard Hostadter noted that the “fundamentalist mind…is essentially Manichean.”

Anthony and Robbins coined the term “exemplary dualism” to describe a hyperbolic form of dualism in which “contemporary sociopolitical or socioreligious forces are transmogrified into absolute contrast categories embodying moral, eschatological, and cosmic polarities upon which hinge the millennial destiny of humankind.”

They find this in “totalist” religious and ideological movements “with highly dualistic worldviews” and “an absolutist apocalyptic outlook” where members cast a “projection of negativity and rejected elements of self onto ideologically designated scapegoats.”