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poetry, prose, and other strings of words · 1993 - 2003
Dualism
1996 ?
Dualism as a philosophical convention has probably been in use since the beginnings of time. It entails the separation of the subject in consideration into two distinct and completely separate objects. In a broad sense, it is a philosophy that divides all of life into opposites — two entities of conflicting natures. It can be seen in such examples as God/good vs. Satan/evil and light vs. dark
From a historical-philosophical standpoint, Plato was perhaps the first great dualist. He divided everything into their separate categories and believed that that was the only way of looking at the world. His primary division was into the realms of being and becoming, which can also be reflected as knowledge and opinion. However, even before Plato the Zoroastrians believed in an ethical dualism whose influence is still seen today.
Despite Zoroaster's supposed assertions that the Supreme Deity is one, known as Ahura Mazda, Zoroastrianism soon incorporated a dualistic system of deities who were engaged in an eternal struggle for the souls of man. The Zoroastrians believed in distinct deities of good and evil, who today can be represented by the God and Satan figures of modern mythology. Zoroastrian thought has left an indelible influence on Western culture in this categorical process of assigning all things a place as either good or evil.
Under the tutelage of Ren� Descartes, dualism received new life during the seventeenth century in his and his followers' absolute conceptions of mind and matter as separate entities wholly unrelated. In the twentieth century Bergson, McDougall, and others have continued the dualistic presence in philosophy, helping it too retain an academic face as well as its conventional one in the minds of millions of Westerners.
I once thought that there were neat distinctions in life, fine lines that divided all things. Black and white, hot and cold, objectivity and subjectivity — these all were of completely separate and opposite orientations, not to be confused. I once thought in terms of eternal dualisms, battling it out: good would triumph over evil, reason over emotion, and objectivity over subjectivity. But that myth has been proven to be not quite as simple as it once did. Life is, in the reality that I see now, a holistic spectrum — like the light spectrum — that admits of no division but that assigned to it by the individual person.
Throughout the years, the West has learned to look at all things in life in this fashion. Everything is "Us vs. Them," one side or another. Perhaps this was due to Plato and Descartes' respective insistences that the universe is dualistic in nature, or, perhaps viewing life in such a manner is part of the natural innocence of the unspoiled mind.
Let us take the example of Ren� Descartes, whose famous declaration "Cogito ergo sum" is supposed to be the height of rational, objective thinking. Descartes believed that, by relying on his own thought, and only his own thought, he could determine what was real. Thus do we call him a Rational Philosopher. However, in his attempts to detach himself from the world, he took the subjective leap of assuming his own existence, assuming that he thinks at all. I therefore believe his rational process, aside from being backward, to be tinged with his personal, subjective viewpoint on the subject. Ambrose Bierce sums up the position well when he, in his Devil's Dictionary, says "The dictum might be improved, however, thus: Cogito cogito ergo cogito sum — 'I think that I think, therefore I think that I am.'" It is not the use of rationality itself that is in question, rather, it is the idea that one can be completely objective, free from the subjectivity of self. Indeed, all things are seen through the veneers of the self, the awareness and experiences that make up the individual's mind and what that person chooses to see and hear.
To analyze the subject further, one can apply the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle to all aspects of life. This Principle teaches us that, by our looking at something, our evaluation of the thing, we affect the system. This theory is also supported by the new and growing science of Chaos. Thus, the lesson goes that the observer distinctly affects the observed — you cannot remove said person from the system!
We also once thought that conscientiousness was completely distinct from our exterior reality, the aforementioned Cartesian belief. However, with the quantum "proof" of the non-locality of the electron (cf. Bell's Theorem), we can se that one of the most dynamic views of the universe (quantum mechanics) forces us to understand the universe as a conscious system where information in one locality is "known" in another with an apparent propagation time greater than that of the speed of light.
As we once thought that energy and matter were distinct things (before Einstein's E=mc2), new rigors of science and philosophy are slowly showing us that the separateness that we once believed in was simply a result of the blinders that we are, even now, still removing. We are today realizing the flaws of the dualistic model which has, till recently, served its purpose, but now is being replaced with a more holistic, more complete model of science and knowledge. The dualistic model is outmoded, outdated. Except for the convenience of comprehending seemingly contrasting positions, with the understanding of such being only a model and subject to the constraints of all artificial constructs, we must now move to replace dualism in our worldview with a holism that better accounts for the life and knowledge around us.