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HAVE YOU EVER WONDERED Why Life Comes in Opposites?

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HAVE YOU EVER WONDERED Why Life Comes in Opposites? 2 H AVE YOU EVER WONDERED why life comesin opposites?Why everything you value is one of a pair of opposites? Why all deci- sions are between opposites? Why all desires are based on opposites? Notice that all spatial and directional dimensions are opposites: up vs. down, inside vs. outside, high vs. low, long vs. short, North vs. South, big vs. small, here vs. there, top vs. bottom, left vs. right. And notice that all things we consider serious and important are one pole of a pair of opposites: good vs. evil, life vs. death, pleasure vs. pain, God vs. Satan, freedom vs. bondage. So also, our social and esthetic values are always put in terms of op- posites: successvs. failure, beautiful vs. ugly, strong vs. weak, intelligent vs. stupid. Even our highest abstractions rest on opposites. Logic, for instance, is concerned with the true vs. the false; epistemology, with appearance vs. reality; ontology, with being vs. non-being. Our world seemsto be a massive collection of opposites. This fact is so commonplace as to hardly need mentioning, but the more one ponders it the more it is strikingly peculiar. For nature, it seems, knows nothing of this world of opposites in which people live. Nature doesn't grow true frogs and false frogs, nor moral trees and immoral trees, nor right oceans and wrong oceans. There is no trace in nature of ethical mountains and unethical mountains. Nor are there even such things as beautiful speciesand ugly species-at least not to Nature, for it is pleased to produce all kinds. Thoreau said Nature never apolo- gizes, and apparently it's becauseNature doesn't know the opposites of 16 Half of It 17 right and wrong and thus doesn't recognizewhat humansimagine to be "errors." It is certainly true that someof the things which we call "opposites" appear to exist in Nature. There are, for instance,big frogs and small frogs, large treesand small trees,ripe orangesand unripe oranges.But it isn't a problem for them, it doesn't throw them into paroxysmsof anxiety.There might evenbe smart bearsand dumb bears,but it doesn't seemto concern them very much. You just don't find inferiority com- plexesin bears. Likewise, there is life and death in the world of nature, but again it doesn'tseem to hold the terrifying dimensionsascribed to it in the world of humans. A very old cat isn't swept with torrents of terror over its impendingdeath. It just calmly walks out to the woods, curls up under a tree, and dies. A terminally ill robin perchescomfortably on t4e limb of a willow, and staresinto the sunset.When finally it can seethe light no more, it closes its eyes for the last time and drops gently to the ground. How different from the way humansface death: Do not go gentleinto that good night Rage,rage againstthe dying of the light. While pain and pleasuredo appear in the world of nature, they are not problemsto worry over. When a dog is in pain, it yelps.When not, it just doesn'tworry about it. It doesn'tdread future pain nor regretpast pain. It seemsto be a very simple and natural affair. We say all that is true because,put simply, Nature is dumb. But that won't quite do for a reason.We are just starting to realize that Nature is much smarter than we would like to think. The great biochemistAl- bert Szent-Gyorgyigives a whimsical example: [When I joined the Institute for AdvancedStudy in Princeton] I did this in the hope that by rubbing elbows with those great atomic physicistsand mathematiciansI would learn something about living matters.But as soon as I revealedthat in any living systemthere are more than two electrons,the physicistswould not speak to me. With all their computersthey could not say what the third electron might do. The remarkablething is that it knows exactly what to do. So that little electronknows some- thing that all the wise men of Princetondon't, and this can only be somethingvery simple. No BOUNDARY I am afraid that Nature is not only smarter than we think, Nature is smarter than we can think. Nature, after all, also produced the human brain, which we flatter ourselves to be one of the most intelligent instru- ments in the cosmos. And can a total idiot fashion a genuine master- piece? According to the Book of Genesis,one of the first tasks given to Adam was to name the animals and plants existing in nature. For nature doesn't come ready-labeled with name tags, and it would be a great convenience if we could classify and name all the various aspects of the natural world. Adam, in other words, was charged with sorting out the complexity of nature's forms and processes and assigning names to them. "These animals look like one another and they don't resemble those animals at all, so let's call this group 'lions' and that group 'bears.' Let's see, you can eat this group of things but not that group. Let's call this group 'grapes' and that group 'rocks.' " But Adam's real task was not so much thinking up names for the animals and plants, laborious as that undoubtedly was. Rather, the cru- cial part of his job was the sorting-out process itself. For, unless there were only one of each animal, which is unlikely, Adam had to group together those animals which were similar and learn to mentally differ- entiate them from dissimilar ones. He had to learn to draw a mental boundary line between the various groups of animals, becauseonly after he did this could he fully recognize, and therefore name, the different beasts. In other words, the great task Adam initiated was the construc- tion of mental or symbolic dividing lines. Adam was the first to delineate nature, to mentally divide it up, mark it off, diagram it. Adam was the first great mapmaker. Adam drew boundaries. So successful was this mapping of nature that, to this day, our lives are largely spent in drawing boundaries. Every decision we make, our every action, our every word is based on the construction, conscious or unconscious, of boundaries. I am not now referring to just a self-identity boundary-important as that certainly is-but to all boundaries in the broadest sense.To make a decision means to draw a boundary line be- tween what to choose and what not to choose. To desire something means to draw a boundary line between pleasurable and painful things and then move toward the former. To maintain an idea means to draw a boundary line between concepts felt to be true and concepts felt not to be true. To receive an education is to learn where and how to draw boundaries and then what to do with the bounded aspects. To maintain a judicial system is to draw a boundary line between those who fit soci- Half of It 19 err's rules and those who don't. To fight a war is to draw a boundary line betweenthose who are for us and thosewho are againstus. To study ethicsis to learn how to draw a boundary line disclosinggood and evil. To pursueWestern medicine is to draw with greaterclarity a boundary betweensickness and health. Quite obviously, from minor incidents to major crises,from small decisionsto big deals,from mild preferencesto flaming passions,our lives are a processof drawing boundaries. The peculiar thing about a boundary is that, however complex and rarefied it might be, it actually marks off nothing but an inside vs. an outside.For example,we can draw the very simplestform of a boundary line as a circle. and seethat it disclosesan inside versusan outside: outside But notice that the oppositesof inside vs. outside didn't exist in them- selvesuntil we drew the boundary of the circle. It is the boundary line itself, in other words, which createsa pair of opposites.In short, to draw boundariesis to manufactureopposites. Thus we can start to seethat the reasonwe live in a world of oppositesis preciselybecause life as we know it is a processof drawing boundaries. And the world of oppositesis a world of conflict, as Adam himself would soon discover.Adam must have beenfascinated with the power generatedby drawing boundary lines and invoking names.Imagine: a simple sound such as "sky" could representthe whole immensity and vastnessof the blue heavens,which were, by the power of boundary lines, recognizedto be different from the earth, from water, from fire. So insteadof handling and manipulating real objects,Adam could ma- nipulate in his headthese magic names which stood for the objectsthem- selves.Before the invention of boundariesand names,for example,if Adam wanted to tell Eve that he thought shewas as dumb as a jackass, he had to grab Eve and then wander around until he also found a jack- ass,and then point to the jackass,then point to Eve, then jump up and down and grunt and make stupid faces.But now, through the magic of words, Adam could just look up and say, "Good heavens,my dear,you are quite as dumb as a jackass." Eve,who by the way was really much wiser than Adam, usually held her tongue.That is, shedeclined to recip- rocate with word magic, for she knew in her heart that words were a No BOUNDARY two-edged sword,and that he who livesby the sword,perishes by the sword. In the meantime,the results of Adam's endeavorswere spectacular, powerful, magical, and he understandablystarted to get a little cocky.
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