There's this process I've observed, which I'm tentatively naming 'oppositional differentiation'. It's a crucial player in the psychology of toddlers & adolescents. It is the act of defining differences between self & others by opposing the other. A constitutional commitment to being in opposition, most especially to authority figures. It is most evoked when authority figures attempt to impose upon the oppositional differentiator, & the very act of imposing may indeed be the evocateur of this personality mechanism. Certainly it seems that in escalating the imposition, escalation of the oppositional differentiation occurs.
This behavior is not the exclusive province of teens & toddlers, rather that is where it initially exhibits in the individual. I would suggest many of us have experience with individuals whose commitment to being argumentative exceeds the norm, most especially we notice those in whom the debating instinct has run amok. I would say that such individuals have gotten stuck in those phases of childhood where such argument skills were necessary to survive the muddled impingings of authority figures.
& of course, we see this tendency whenever we read thru the postings of commentary, whether email discussion groups, or the sections following most articles, blogs, news reports, & other media content online. Frequently the expression of oppositional difference is connected to anger & fear, just as often masking the motive provided by the anger & fear in the guise of 'rational argumentation'.
3.28.2008
The Life Trip versus the Death Trip
So, now that you've experienced my perspective on duality, I'd like to focus in on a particular aspect of duality: the Life Trip versus the Death Trip.
I believe in very few dualities, but the tendency to frame life in terms of it's dueling livability versus deathliness attributes is pervasive & hard to escape . . . . . . . . . This is a dichotomous space where I've made a choice. I choose life. Not in some lame anti-abortion way, ignoring the necessity of controlling our fertility & being happy that abortion is so much better than the infanticide it replaces. (Humans have always controlled their fertility, we just don't want to look at how that worked in pre-industrial culture.) I choose life in the sense that I prefer love over hate, positivity over negativity, peace over war, compassion over distance, empathy over indifference. I align with victims regularly, if the alternative is to ally with aggressors & abusers.
I believe in very few dualities, but the tendency to frame life in terms of it's dueling livability versus deathliness attributes is pervasive & hard to escape . . . . . . . . . This is a dichotomous space where I've made a choice. I choose life. Not in some lame anti-abortion way, ignoring the necessity of controlling our fertility & being happy that abortion is so much better than the infanticide it replaces. (Humans have always controlled their fertility, we just don't want to look at how that worked in pre-industrial culture.) I choose life in the sense that I prefer love over hate, positivity over negativity, peace over war, compassion over distance, empathy over indifference. I align with victims regularly, if the alternative is to ally with aggressors & abusers.
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 . . . . .
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 . . . . .
Who is this demon, Kia?
Born in 1965, I have been writing with intent & purpose since 1977. An excessively conscientious intellectual child blooms into adult, always with that desire to save the world. To make it a better place for my being here.
Gad, what a heavy burden to assume. & so many of us do it. It builds strength in us, tho', this tilting at windmills.
We all need day jobs to keep us moving forward; I raised children for a coupla decades, & in a century or so, this will be seen as the day job it was. All the while I read, & even occasionally I wrote.
I attended college, studying math. I nearly completed degrees in statistics & sociology before coming to my senses & dropping out. I was in it for the beauty of learning, not the vo-tec necessities. Plus, I want to be a sci-fi writer when I grow up. (A sci-fi writing, pajama-wearing pornographer, technically, but that's another story.) & sci-fi writers study sciences. I have a passionate love / hate thing going on for humanity, so studying people is what I do alongside breathing . . . . . .
In 1996 the passel of chilluns & I quit driving a car to get around our northern California sprawlburbia. Bicycling took the place of the automobile for the betterment of us all. That's right, I raised a rabid nest of alternative-thinking, environmentally-minded, authority-questioning progressives. They vote. They think with their own little heads. It's marvelous. Children & young people restore my faith in humanity all on their own, on an ongoing basis.
Finally, for the moment, I'm gonna share something way-not-politically-correct in our puritanical time & place: I'm a sex freak. & it feels like an act of revolution to pursue my pleasures in the face of entrenched human culture that fears excess pleasure.
These are some of the themes that dominate my life. There are others, but hopefully, universe willing, there will be other posts.
Courage.
Gad, what a heavy burden to assume. & so many of us do it. It builds strength in us, tho', this tilting at windmills.
We all need day jobs to keep us moving forward; I raised children for a coupla decades, & in a century or so, this will be seen as the day job it was. All the while I read, & even occasionally I wrote.
I attended college, studying math. I nearly completed degrees in statistics & sociology before coming to my senses & dropping out. I was in it for the beauty of learning, not the vo-tec necessities. Plus, I want to be a sci-fi writer when I grow up. (A sci-fi writing, pajama-wearing pornographer, technically, but that's another story.) & sci-fi writers study sciences. I have a passionate love / hate thing going on for humanity, so studying people is what I do alongside breathing . . . . . .
In 1996 the passel of chilluns & I quit driving a car to get around our northern California sprawlburbia. Bicycling took the place of the automobile for the betterment of us all. That's right, I raised a rabid nest of alternative-thinking, environmentally-minded, authority-questioning progressives. They vote. They think with their own little heads. It's marvelous. Children & young people restore my faith in humanity all on their own, on an ongoing basis.
Finally, for the moment, I'm gonna share something way-not-politically-correct in our puritanical time & place: I'm a sex freak. & it feels like an act of revolution to pursue my pleasures in the face of entrenched human culture that fears excess pleasure.
These are some of the themes that dominate my life. There are others, but hopefully, universe willing, there will be other posts.
Courage.
A long time in the making . . . . . . .
Those who know me will say, it's about frickin' time . . . . . . . .
This blog is meant to be as much my journal as anything else. The title comes out of my belief that it's gettin' better all the time, that we journey into a glorious future, & that our best & brightest dreams can, & probably will, come true.
I started life pessimistic. Cynical. Bitter. I'm a woman, daughter of a hard-core feminist, & a passionate student of history. It was hard to be anything but negative as an adolescent; I sought after heroes of my own gender & found such pain & hardship, & the harshest of judgement passed down on women again & again . . . . . . . .
I've spent a lot of time being depressed in my life, & darkly angry. But, frankly, what a waste of time. It was presumably a necessary phase, but for some years now I've practiced at strengthening my inner pollyanna. I consider myself to be professionally optimistic. Anger is so boring, so old, so yesterday, so been-there-done-that.
Rather, what's interesting & new is positivity. Belief & hope in mankind, in our place on this planet, in this universe, of our possibilities & nobilities, even in the voluminous evidence of our perfidy . . . . . . . . . That's what I hope to draw on even when I'm in my most pessimistic of spaces . . .. . . .
Welcome to Radical Progress, a blog about stepping into our happy future . . . . . . .
This blog is meant to be as much my journal as anything else. The title comes out of my belief that it's gettin' better all the time, that we journey into a glorious future, & that our best & brightest dreams can, & probably will, come true.
I started life pessimistic. Cynical. Bitter. I'm a woman, daughter of a hard-core feminist, & a passionate student of history. It was hard to be anything but negative as an adolescent; I sought after heroes of my own gender & found such pain & hardship, & the harshest of judgement passed down on women again & again . . . . . . . .
I've spent a lot of time being depressed in my life, & darkly angry. But, frankly, what a waste of time. It was presumably a necessary phase, but for some years now I've practiced at strengthening my inner pollyanna. I consider myself to be professionally optimistic. Anger is so boring, so old, so yesterday, so been-there-done-that.
Rather, what's interesting & new is positivity. Belief & hope in mankind, in our place on this planet, in this universe, of our possibilities & nobilities, even in the voluminous evidence of our perfidy . . . . . . . . . That's what I hope to draw on even when I'm in my most pessimistic of spaces . . .. . . .
Welcome to Radical Progress, a blog about stepping into our happy future . . . . . . .
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