The Great Principle of Polarity
Piers Clement
"Everything is Dual; everything has poles; everything has its
pair of opposites; like and unlike are the same; opposites are
identical in nature, but different in degree; extremes meet;
all truths are but half truths; all paradoxes may be reconciled"
Some bright spark once said "People can be divided into two sorts: those who believe that
people can be divided into two sorts, and those who admit the
impossibility of that!" The dualistic approach makes things
easy in a lot of ways: if we can subdivide the whole of humanity
into good/evil, male/female, believing/atheist, new age/old age,
young/old etc. then we can make wonderful generalizations about
the half of the population we don't think we belong to, and
thereby solve a lot of problems at once. In fact the truth is
always more complicated even than we thought: within every
person striving for good lie dormant thoughts of an incredibly
evil nature, whilst the person who appears as the embodiment of
evil may be capable of tremendous acts of dedication to others
given the right circumstances. Make a generalization about the
young, foreigners, academics, activists or whoever and then
try to find an individual example which fits the generalization:
each person is a unique case where, the closer you look, the
less he/she seems to fit the characteristics described in the
generalization.
You are a special case. Let nobody try to compare you,
adversely or otherwise, with someone else or to put you into
a category with a lot of others. Yet at the same time you have
everything in common with everyone else. All those qualities
of good/evil, young/old etc. exist within you as a pair of
opposites always seeking to maintain equilibrium or be
reconciled with one another. I remember in my childhood a
good family friend who was an ardent pacifist at a time when
this was unpopular, but he was oh, so aggressive in his
pacificism! - and his main leisure pursuit was playing
toy soldiers! Similarly the mildest-mannered person may
meet a situation (often in traffic!) when all the
built-up anger will suddenly be expressed, much to everyone's
surprise.
PIERS
Clement
Version 1: 31 July 1997
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