I am dropping the sheep/wolf dichotomy. It is a good picture, but a false dichotomy.
On the other hand, all dichotomies are false. Did you ever think of that? No two things are ever mutually exclusive, not to mention opposites. Black is not the opposite of white, it is just lack of light. Evil is not the opposite of good, it is just lack of empathy or perspective. Liberal is not the opposite of conservative. Green is not the opposite of red. Christian is not the opposite of Muslim. Sweet is not the opposite of sour. A man is not the opposite of a woman.
Thinking in opposites has been one of the most limiting trends in thinking to infect Western culture. It is so limiting it is actively damaging. When you think in opposites you can't learn or change you mind, because you believe that you would then have to change everything you believe about a given thing.
6 comments:
I have always wondered whether these ideas are symptomatic of our bilateral symmetry and two hemispheres of our brain. If we had trilatel symmetry or more would we always divide alternatives into 3's?
Any way - I agree with you.
In Arthur C. Clarke's book Rama, he postulates a race where all their thinking is based on three.
I like that two... Damn! I meant "too"! ;-)
Still, I believe our tendancy to "bilateral thinking" is probably not so much related to our brains having 2 hemispheres, as much as our bodies having bilateral symmetry. You know, "On one hand... on the other hand..."
My argument tends to reinforce that language theory : it is a matter of perception, rather than simple biology. After all, the brain's capacity for self-programming is yet unmeasured, and perhaps unfathomable. The way we see the world, such it will be. And if it were otherwise, it wouldn't matter to us. Unless we have the (seemingly) very rare idea to envision other ways of thinking.
It is one of my passions : imagining how my cat perceives and thinks, how my 2 year old nephew sees the world and me ("Uncle Pascal is vewy tall!!!"), etc... Just imagining how an Arab sees the West, and how a Westerner sees the Arabs, is already a very vast field. And it would seem as if traditional thinking in the Far-East (China, Japan, etc.) is sometimes the exact opposite of Euro-American mentality.
I know, I've just cast a big handful of seeds for many debates here, and probably on a very fertile soil. ;-) Basically, I meant to express that I love trying to expand my thinking. Be it straight, perpendicular, lateral or downright convoluted. (Downright : that's down the stairs, third and a half door on the right. Platform 9 and three quarters, Hogwarts Express...)
Yes, no, maybe so. :)
Of course, you can't forget about how predominant it was in Far Eastern cultures. Somewhere in there you have note yin and yang (male and female, black and white, passive and forceful, etc.)
I think yin and yang was a philosophical tool to make a person accept more than just one thing in life. Two is a big step up.
There is always some yin in the yang, and some yang in the yin. (These central dots.) It's not only a step up of considering two, it is also a message of acceptation: distinctions are seldom absolute.
I think the enlightened mind can see much wisdom in the yin-yang. For instance, you can see three in it : the two form a circle, the symbol of the whole. It means that seeing only one of them, or even the two, is missing the big picture.
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