Duality

There is an implicit assumption that needs examining, and I'm just the woman to do the job. The fundamental operating assumption I'm interested in is that duality is some basic and pervasive characteristic of the universe.

By duality I mean that tendency to see things as existing as an either-or paradigm, a kind of binary form of dualism, or the more nuanced propensity to see things in terms of a continuum, from one end to the other, polar opposites, ostensibly. Dualisms placed in opposition to each other in an effort, all too often, to expand knowledge.

Here's some examples of commonly perceived inherent dualisms: homosexual versus heterosexual, male vs female, dominant vs submissive, strength vs weakness, power vs vulnerability . . . . once you start looking, you'll see them all over the place.

The problem is this. Humans are bilateral, it's an important tho' less-than-perceptible part of day-to-day cognition, and our brains are thus essentially bilateral. Bilaterality plays an important role in how cognition happens, and the fact that what comes out of our minds (the product of our brains) is heavily tinged by a dualistic bias should not be terribly surprising, nor ascribed much meaning beyond this obviousness.

As a happy little lay-student-acolyte of science I can tell you that while duality happens, it is not some special pattern of the universe, not some particularly-to-be-enshrined aspect of the 'true nature of reality.' & an assumption that somehow in holding some dualism whole in one's hands a truth is revealed can hide so much.

There's a handy-dandy way of visualizing this: The hard-core, black-vs-white dualism can be envisioned as a toggle-switch, like a light switch. On. Off. Those are the only choices. Oh so very binary and simple. The more nuanced dualism of a continuum is a needle-gauge tracing it's hesitant arc. I like to then blow this out to say we'd all be better served to think of our quantification choices as looking more like a rainbow orb, dark in the center, light on the outside, with all the colors of the light spectrum corresponding to a polar-coordinated spot . . . . . . . My modest attempt to push the conversation to a more complicated perspective . . . . .