Dualism

We suffer from an incurable disease and only ‘the miracle of modern philosophy’ can save us: we suffer from Dualism. It has metastasized; it has taken over our language, our logic and even our mathematics. It is fatal for cosmology.

In math, it is embedded in the concept of Zero on the infamous number line. (-2) is the opposite of (2); therefore (-2 + 2 = 0). (-2) cancels out (2); but in the real world, nothing ever cancels anything (cancel-culture notwithstanding). In the real world, there are no zeros (there are null sets, but no zeros): (-x) and (x) do not cancel, they coexist, albeit uncomfortably.  

Of course, mathematics is an extremely useful tool; it has helped us unlock the secrets of the universe. But as Zeno proved, math is not the universe, and as Gödel proved, math has its limits. We err when we imagine that the real number system is somehow embedded in the ‘real world’ of everyday experience; it’s not! It is just a model of reality; it is not reality itself. The map is not the territory.

In logic, it is called the law of the excluded middle. P or ~P. Never P and ~P. Again, great tool, defective model of reality.

In language, it’s called grammar. Our Indo-European language is the structural embodiment of Dualism. Consider antonyms for example. Cold, we are told, is the opposite of Hot, but of course, that’s just a trick our language plays on us. Heat is a unitary phenomenon; everything is ‘hot’…just hot in varying degrees. Even black holes give off heat (Hawking), and absolute zero (0ᵅ K) is incompatible with existence itself.

This is just a superficial example. The entire logos of our language is dualist: subject/object, active/passive. ‘Vectored action’ forms the substructure of our language…but not of reality. 

In fact, there is no such thing as ‘vectored action’ per se. It would violate Newton’s Third Law of Thermodynamics. It is a concept we abstract from ‘action’ itself; it’s a one sided coin, the sound of one hand clapping. On the contrary, all action is ‘reciprocal’; it impacts the putative subject as well as the object. Fire a gun, feel the recoil. Do unto another, do unto yourself. Karma, Golden Rule, Great Commandment, Categorical Imperative, you name it. 

To the extent that any action seems to conform to the vector model, it is simply a degenerate case of reciprocal action. 

In fact, every T is a little bit ‘naught T.’ Apply T however you wish, it is a set of elements and one of those elements is ~T. Consider the famous case of Humpty Dumpty. He spent too much time reading poetry and he placed too much trust in the ‘safety net’ promised by the State (“all the king’s horses and all the king’s men”). 

He’s an egg, for crying out loud; he’s fragile…but he doesn’t know it. The seed of Humpty’s demise is his shell. He can’t live without it, but turns out, he can’t live with it either. 

You and I are fragile too. We are ‘eggs’ in our own right but we call our fragility mortality. Everyone dies, even Jesus; it is an essential component of the human condition. 

You protest, “You are a living organism; so is Humpty I guess…well, sort of; but what about inanimate objects?” 

Well, take this stone for example. See it? It’s right there. Don’t make me hit you over the head with it. Is it mortal? Not really. Is it fragile? Not in the usual sense of the word. Yet it is inexorably eroded by the endless cycle of rain and sun, expansion and contraction, fracture and rupture. Stone today, gone tomorrow!

So, what about cosmology? In many early human cultures, folks ritually acted out the patterns they saw in nature.  According to Ezra Pound (Cantos), the City of Dioce, Ecbatan (Ecbatana), was built in concentric rings corresponding to the circuits of the celestial bodies. 

We celebrate our own version of this sacrament every time we order something from Amazon. We’re hoping for that gorgeous vase we saw online; Amazon makes it happen! (I claim rights to that phrase in case Bezos wants to use it down the road.) The box arrives, vase intact, with a red sticker on top that reads, “Fragile”. Not-vase is an element of Vase.  

The dualism polluting our language, logic and mathematics has also corrupted our cosmology. Look no further than the traditional concept of Heaven and Hell. If Jill goes to Heaven and Jack goes to Hell, then eschatology has become a zero sum game: (2) + (-2) = 0. But that is not how things work! 

Think dialectically. If T is our thesis, ~T is our antithesis. Our synthesis is X, where both T and ~T are elements of X. Nothing is lost. The apparent contradiction of T and ~T is sublimated in X. There are no opposites in life, only degrees. There is no conflict that cannot be resolved into a higher level harmony…outside of politics that is.

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