"Gettin' out inta' space,not waitin' fer' th crowd."- Junior Samples
Opposites appear to define each other. Black opposes white as an absence of the other. Left opposes right as a mirrored form. Pleasure,which can be experienced by itself, is more intensely encountered if opposed to pain. However experiences tend to over lap,conclusions are often drawn out and imposed arbitrarily on groups with a single common attribute. This type of generalization allows us to consider white,good and black,evil. It so becomes active in our unconscious makeup,creating links of preferred associations that are imagined as being consistently valid.
Modes of action are subjected to this same predisposition. Fearlessness (confidence) and fearfulness (caution) could be observed as oppositions, yet either mode would prove foolishly flawed if failure to obtain a preferred object was the result. Much of what could be called linear thought proceeds along lines temperamentally bonded to preference. It is typically horizontal, conforming to the same associations gravity has imposed on planetary surface dwellers. The tendency to rely on a horizontal point of reference comes along with the familiar territory, and a clear demonstration of this stability is balance, the exact compensation for equal opposition.
A mechanical linear success such as this is simple to illustrate: each single value working in relation to degrees of opposition with each other value and we arrive at a specific end. Perfect ( yes, no, maybe) and severely limited. In geometry a' cavalier projection' is defined as two oblique lines diverging from each other at a rate of 45 degrees. This interesting symbol (combined with a tendency to read from either left or right) show it to be a point of divergence,expansion, effluence and at the same time one of Convergence contraction and cessation. The symbol itself is not subject to gravity per say, but only our orientation.
Of course, a hair pin is incomplete: to transcend a merely equative value a visual symbol( as a system) must be closed, even if its purpose is to embody the illimitable. The dynamic symbol evolves, triangle,cross,square star, obtuse,acute,combined,superimposed upon,each variation revealing unique internal correspondences and cyclic qualities. At once the paucity of dividing two value points on a single line is apparent and a richer,more valid middle way between oppositions has been suggested. A deeper awareness of multiplicity that in reality is actually transpiring beyond more limited perceptions. It becomes an acknowledgment and an act of living,expressing and responding within a true set of potentials. If 'cool' can be defined . . . This says a good bit of it.
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2 comments:
I had three thoughts about this post.
1: Needs illustrations. Some of the ideas are abstract enough that I can't quite figure them out.
2. Aesthetic Realism. Eli Siegel was a New York poet and critic who integrated a lot of philosophy and psychology into a system of "criticism" based on the union of opposites. I put that word in quotation marks, because it wasn't just literary or art criticism, but life criticism as well. Siegel and his group were notorious in the '70s and early '80s for their insistence that homosexuals could "deeply, permanently change" through the study of Aesthetic Realism principles and dialogue with a panel of adherents (most of whom were apparently converted from homosexuality) that included a lot of soul-searching and psychological examination. A former college roommate of mine, who was gay (and miserable), went to New York in '76 expressly to investigate this stuff. He's now married with two kids. His story of transformation, particularly of the moment when he first began to feel things for women that he'd never felt and his impulses toward men began to fade, is the kind of thing that gives you goosebumps, even if you are (as I am) predisposed to look askance at such stories. Anyway, I always liked Eli Siegel's point of view, the essence of which is: "Beauty is the making one of opposites." Not exactly original with him, but he brought a lot of new ideas to it, and applied them in this big, compassionate way. He believed that the deepest human desire was to respect and love the world.
3. I'd be interested in understanding what distinction you might make between the "middle way" you mention and the "synthesis" that dialectic materialism posits between any thesis and its antithesis. The fourth dimension of time enters into that, so maybe I'm asking you to compare apples and oranges. But there you have it.
Hey! I feel like giving you some kind of monetary reward for your responce. Instead I'll try and spit out an original quote. "Intellect framed by absurdity has its proper place in obscurity". I plan to respond in depth to your comment when time allows. I may even have to re-invent my own words.
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