The binary is so tempting. Black. White. Us. Them. Boy. Girl. Big. Small. Loud. Quiet. Good. Bad. Positive. Negative. More than just an efficient way to organize the world, the binary is perhaps a vital tool in maintaining consciousness.

In his book In the Blink of An Eye, Zoologist Andrew Parker explores The Cambrian explosion. This ten-million-year period hosted the dramatic and rapid evolution of almost all present-day animal families. It marks the transformation from simple life forms to complex organisms. It’s often likened to the biological big bang.

But why this ten million-year span out of the billions of years that life has been evolving? Parker concludes that it was due to the development of the biological light sensors we now know as eyes. But we’re talking about minuscule sea slug-looking guys—the sperm in the primordial stew.

For the first time, a living thing could see what was right in front of it. The first thing this simple sea slug would have done with his new light sensors would be to start deciding whether the inputs it was getting were “good” or “bad.” I mean, maybe it floated around for half a million years just in a blissed-out state, letting the sun shine into its little sea slug soul.

Good or bad? I imagine this primordial decision was one of the first binaries in the development of consciousness. Now, 525 million years later, this rudimentary binary has grown into a complex system of binaries—our cultures and our cliques. Including our species’ weighty obsession with good versus evil.

Our brains even look like sea lugs.

The establishment view of gender and sex is perhaps the most famous binary of all. Men are male. Women are female. And this makes sense if our evolutionary goal is to pro-create. It helps to know what parts can go where.

But then, staring out from my chest like two eyes, my nipples seem to imply that we have got it all wrong. I should not have nipples because nipples are for breastfeeding. So, why aren’t cis-men getting gender-affirming care and having their nipples removed?

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