The root of paradox

To be sure, I'm the last person to claim we live in an either-or world. That's a mistake a lot of people make, though. For too many people these days, if you are not for A, you are automatically -- at least in their minds -- for B. That's ignorance in one of its simplest forms.

In general, between any two extremes, there is an infinite number of shades of gray, so to speak, just as there are an infinite number of numbers beween 0 and 1. Our computer geek wizard friends never tire of their digitality, but it is so limited and artificial, but too many ignorant souls like to think they also have something to say about life in general, but they don't. Not all opposites are digital. For example:

The opposite of "love" is "hate". We have two distinct words for these two notions and I think we all agree that they can be considered complementary; that is, there is some kind of scale along which you can go from one to the other. We characterisze the one as positive and the other as negative, which is a methaphorical way of describing them. Then we have single words that describe differences, like "temperature". To make clear what we mean, we use adjectives, like "hot" or or "warm" or "cool" or "cold" to describe just what we mean. There is a difference between, say, hot and cold, but it is not as extreme as are "love" and "hate". It's nice having a cold drink on a hot day, for instance. And then, we have what the Swiss-German cultural philosopher Jean Gebser characterizes as Ur-Wörter (that is, literally, "primal words"); that is a single word to identify a notion and its opposite all in one. For example, the Latin word altus (from which comes our English word "altitude) means both "high" and "low" or sacer (from which we get our English word "sacred") meands both "blessed" and "cursed"; or the Hebrew word GAL, a verb which can mean "to redeem" and "to defile". (In English, we only have one such word left: "cleave" which can mean "to cut apart" and "to meld together".) In the case of such primal words, of course, it is the context that gives the meaning away.

What this all tells us is that human beings haven't always had today's oh, so beloved if-you-not-with-us-your're-against-us mentality. There was certainly a time when the experiential situation brought forth the distinction; and there are times even now when we have to describe to which degree we want to express something, and we all know that the distance from love to hate can be no more than an exceedingly fine line. For the Ancients, all Life played out between 0 and 1 (cf. the Egyptians, the Pythagoreans, etc.), but around the time of the Renaissance, we finally made the split (we -- literally -- divided our thinking and became "rational", which we have imbued with positive connotations, even though the root of the word is division: ratio, as in a/b. Yes, we turned this notion on its head as well.

The point is that if you pursue a notion or a thought deeply enough, you come to a point at which is becomes paradoxical. This is, in fact, one of the primary methods for determining if you are getting to the root or wellspring of a concept, an idea, a notion. In other words, either-or, 0 or 1, is completely meaningless at the level of superficiality of everyday, modern life, regardless of what our geeky friends would have us believe. To delve into the depths, however, takes time, energy, willpower, fortitude, and a good dose of courage, which explains why most people never ever make the effort. It is so much easier to accuse another of not being for you, so obviously they're against you. But it is so only in your own mind.