We humans love to imagine things in opposition. Night/Day, Black/White, Good/Evil, Male/Female, Mainstream/Alternative, Either/Or...To Be or Not To Be, that is the question. And it's always a fight. Us v. Them.Dichotomize. Dichotomize. Dichotomize. That's what we do. It makes everything so logical and easy to understand. We want to understand. This is why we invented geometry. To give us a concrete/abstract way to describe the Universe, and our place in it.
But if we look at the idea of opposition through the lens of geometry, we can see how it's nothing but a fabrication. Imagine a circle. Draw a straight line through it that intersects its center point. That's it's diameter, right? Now look at the points at either end of this line we call the diameter. Lets call them points A and B. We see points A and B as being diametrically opposite. They're on opposite ends of the diameter line. Makes sense. But that's just what we call them. They don't care what we call them. They don't even exist. They're figments of our imagination, an attempt to impose order on what we perceive as chaos. But since these imaginary points are opposed, we extend this logic outwards, using it as justification for other made up forms of opposition. War, for instance. Or exploitation. Or the “conquering” of Nature. There are myriad things with opposition as an axiom.
We forget that it's still one circle.
Imagine a sphere, a planet, with two diametrically opposed magnetic poles...Earth, perhaps. Do the poles oppose each other? Of course not, they're part of a whole, like the points on the circle. If anything, they hold it together. The whole universe, in fact, is comprised of a fantastic array of push-me, pull-you forces...gravity/levity, attraction/repulsion, matter/anti-matter. It is vast. It contains multitudes. Contradictions. But it's all the same thing. Opposite forces are not at odds with each other, they are in concert...Yin/Yang. But, being geometry nerds, we can't accept that. We want opposition. It seems...right.
Aristotle said that if perfect logic proceeds from a premise that is false, then, no matter how good the logic, the conclusions thus derived can be nothing but false. He was right. But did he realize what he was saying?
Anne has finished her first novel and is busy peddling it to agents and publishers. She can be found wandering the streets of Crestone, CO and hanging out in Internet cafes. Contact her at annepyterek@gmail.com
