Everything will become obvious, like gray and white writing on the wall in big, bold letters. I recently noticed that I often argue with people who categorically express an opinion about anything. It’s as if the very exclusion of the availability of other options grabs me. I would like to expand my visibility area. I wanted to write about this, speculate on what it is all about, what criteria and life paradigms guide these and other people. Cognitive complexity is the ability to see the subtlest differences between phenomena and respond to them. The opposite reality is to think in absolute terms: an opinion is right or wrong, a decision good or bad, that is, low need for cognitive complexity. This is how we think in stereotypes, attitudes, introjects. The majority are in the middle. The abstract and analytical parts of the mind combine with each other. And what controls this variability is the level of need for cognitive complexity. What influences the need? Why is it important for some to appreciate all points of view, to take into account nuances, while others (with a low need for complexity) - staunchly adhere to only one point of view. The important part of this: a low need for cognitive complexity and a high degree of categoricalness are a resource. When dealing with stress and anxiety, black and white thinking is very helpful. In medicine and in the army, in matters of safety or achieving results at work, in sports. It helps you make quick decisions. So, after reading smart books, I didn’t understand why the low need for cognitive complexity bothers me. Psychotherapy (native projection) helped me with this. But I understood why dividing into categories and creating frameworks for different concepts is necessary. We cannot see everything that surrounds us until we come up with a suitable name for the phenomena (Lynn Tillman). According to Festinger, the need to remain true to oneself and one's decisions helps maintain self-esteem and predict the behavior of other people. To maintain a sense of identity, an understanding of who we really are, we need to be around enough people who think and feel the same. This creates the impression that our perception of the world, our attitudes and actions, our beliefs and behavior are correct and adequate to any situation. The question remains of how to achieve the golden mean: not to become a stone with fixed views / not to drown among the diversity of opinions.