It is inevitable to polarize. From time immemorial, we have had the need to polarize and construct dualistic views of the world, perhaps as a human response in seeking to understand this complex environment in which we are placed. Just think about creation myths and religious stories—to quote an ancient example, but there are plenty—: they already showed these pairs of opposition: creator and created, light and shadow, day and night, sin and salvation. We still talk in terms of binarity as we continue to oppose objects and concepts to understand them: the sun and the moon, the city and the countryside, the left and the right. Even digital technologies are entirely based on two terms: ones and zeros. Over an above, human Modernity has done nothing but enhance this particular conception, mixing it with the idealization of order and progress and a cultural system that supports —and guarantees— this division.
Whether this binarization is fundamentally a structural issue of the world itself or whether it is a developed behavior of the human psyche is irrelevant to me. There is something clear: uncertainty generates anxiety, it is distressing, anguishing. Standing in front of the abstract, of the obtuse, of the vast, the inability to classify, it makes us blind, crazy, it stagnates us. We are not trained to enjoy this particular struggle between opposing forces. We humans have known, since archaic times, how to take advantage of the reduction of events' complexity to just a pair of alternatives and have turned it into a survival mechanism, which is particularly awesome. However, it looks like we are getting too accustomed to this simplification.
Grays —as the midpoints between black and white— mean complexity, the indeterminate, the incompleteness. Also, for the western culture that shapes us, grays translate directly into anguish due to the impossibility to choose between two differentiated elements, in this case black and white. The modern apparatus keep on making us think in terms of binarity. This symmetry has become even a quantum principle that now also runs our physics; just think about the latest scientific discoveries on matter and antimatter. A re-interpretation of Dante’s work The Divine Comedy actually mentions that "the darkest places in hell are reserved for those who are neutral in times of moral crisis". Why all this propaganda against the slightest idea of complexity?
Although duality works effectively when it comes to solving rational issues, it presents serious problems with regard to irrational affairs, often deeper and more relevant to our existence. The lack of polarity hence requires a higher critical analysis of what we know, see and experience, which does not sound particularly appealing to the world power system. Binarization continues to exert an obsolete hold on us if it stops us from looking beyond this duality of black and white, or good and bad. That's why it urges the need to transcend polarity.
There are probably other ways but this is what has worked for me so far —and I am sorry I always talk about my life, but the fact is I haven't lived another one—. If we assume that our understanding of the world depends on its deconstruction in pairs of opposition, then it is logical to choose one of two alternatives. Save that in order to transcend this polarity, I deeply believe it's necessary to explore both alternatives, and furthermore, carry to the extreme of them. There is somewhat controversial with the extremes and also a lot of modern propaganda against its implications. But I personally think that going to the extreme of possibilities is actually the best way to perceive the whole. It demands a high degree of commitment, a release of the organicity, an opening to the risk of exposing oneself to the self-awareness of being. The journey may become even magic when we find the opposites in total syncretism —the order in disorder, for example— and the whole conception of dualism starts to weaken: the two mutually exclusive alternatives show up together?
Openness to radical change is not seen as an alternative anymore, but as a consequence in the search of transcending polarity. Of course it's clear we have to think about what we're willing to lose, to let go, but not necessarily overthink. After all, there is no thing such as pure state of the subject, moreover, if something is actually true, it is the capacity of the subject to be affected by everything. We are so social, so created by the coercive apparatus, so assembled, that we find it almost impossible to think about a range of possibilities that breaks away from what we and society expect from us. These limits are closely related to the polarization model that runs our critical thinking.
If we are able to spot this slight deviation, this shift, this variation in our natural organicity, it probably means that somewhere there is a positive perturbation: time to take advantage of it, time to start exploring. Polarization is essential, as long as we do not just simply choose one of the poles but transcend carrying both alternatives to the extreme in order to lead the emergence of a new wider and more complex understanding of the whole thing in question, and also of oneself, of course. The era of continuous change is paying off, especially in this quest to transcend polarity. But the willingness to make it happen is still the determining factor.
Whether this binarization is fundamentally a structural issue of the world itself or whether it is a developed behavior of the human psyche is irrelevant to me. There is something clear: uncertainty generates anxiety, it is distressing, anguishing. Standing in front of the abstract, of the obtuse, of the vast, the inability to classify, it makes us blind, crazy, it stagnates us. We are not trained to enjoy this particular struggle between opposing forces. We humans have known, since archaic times, how to take advantage of the reduction of events' complexity to just a pair of alternatives and have turned it into a survival mechanism, which is particularly awesome. However, it looks like we are getting too accustomed to this simplification.
Grays —as the midpoints between black and white— mean complexity, the indeterminate, the incompleteness. Also, for the western culture that shapes us, grays translate directly into anguish due to the impossibility to choose between two differentiated elements, in this case black and white. The modern apparatus keep on making us think in terms of binarity. This symmetry has become even a quantum principle that now also runs our physics; just think about the latest scientific discoveries on matter and antimatter. A re-interpretation of Dante’s work The Divine Comedy actually mentions that "the darkest places in hell are reserved for those who are neutral in times of moral crisis". Why all this propaganda against the slightest idea of complexity?
Although duality works effectively when it comes to solving rational issues, it presents serious problems with regard to irrational affairs, often deeper and more relevant to our existence. The lack of polarity hence requires a higher critical analysis of what we know, see and experience, which does not sound particularly appealing to the world power system. Binarization continues to exert an obsolete hold on us if it stops us from looking beyond this duality of black and white, or good and bad. That's why it urges the need to transcend polarity.
There are probably other ways but this is what has worked for me so far —and I am sorry I always talk about my life, but the fact is I haven't lived another one—. If we assume that our understanding of the world depends on its deconstruction in pairs of opposition, then it is logical to choose one of two alternatives. Save that in order to transcend this polarity, I deeply believe it's necessary to explore both alternatives, and furthermore, carry to the extreme of them. There is somewhat controversial with the extremes and also a lot of modern propaganda against its implications. But I personally think that going to the extreme of possibilities is actually the best way to perceive the whole. It demands a high degree of commitment, a release of the organicity, an opening to the risk of exposing oneself to the self-awareness of being. The journey may become even magic when we find the opposites in total syncretism —the order in disorder, for example— and the whole conception of dualism starts to weaken: the two mutually exclusive alternatives show up together?
Openness to radical change is not seen as an alternative anymore, but as a consequence in the search of transcending polarity. Of course it's clear we have to think about what we're willing to lose, to let go, but not necessarily overthink. After all, there is no thing such as pure state of the subject, moreover, if something is actually true, it is the capacity of the subject to be affected by everything. We are so social, so created by the coercive apparatus, so assembled, that we find it almost impossible to think about a range of possibilities that breaks away from what we and society expect from us. These limits are closely related to the polarization model that runs our critical thinking.
If we are able to spot this slight deviation, this shift, this variation in our natural organicity, it probably means that somewhere there is a positive perturbation: time to take advantage of it, time to start exploring. Polarization is essential, as long as we do not just simply choose one of the poles but transcend carrying both alternatives to the extreme in order to lead the emergence of a new wider and more complex understanding of the whole thing in question, and also of oneself, of course. The era of continuous change is paying off, especially in this quest to transcend polarity. But the willingness to make it happen is still the determining factor.
