Is Duality Really True?
Is duality really true? Currently, it is seen by most people to be absolutely true, no questions asked. However, I’ve made a recent observation that just may have turned the tables. I would love to know your thoughts on this, so please contact me if you’re interested in sharing your ideas.
The easiest examples to begin with would undoubtedly be light and darkness, and hot and cold. These two pairs of opposites are seen as having a dual relationship. If you put them on a spectrum it is clear that they exist on opposite sides. However, being an opposite isn’t all about the placement on a spectrum. Being an opposite implies that the two are of equal value. However, I assure you, light and darkness, and hot and cold are not equal in value.
Allow me to explain. You can add light to a dark room and the room will get brighter. You can take away light from a bright room, and the room will get darker. However, you cannot add darkness to a room and get a darker room, nor can you take away darkness and get brighter room. There is only one factor in this equation and that is light. It is the same with hot and cold. You can add heat to a room and warm it up or take away heat and cool it down. However, you cannot add coldness nor take away coldness. For you non-chemist’s out there, allow me to give a basic explanation. Let’s take a refrigerator for example. The wired metal bars on the back of a fridge feel warm. This is because there is freeze-on running through them which absorbs heat from the air taken from inside the fridge. The then cooled air is then blown back into the fridge cooling it down. At first you might think, “Well, cool air is being blown in and that’s cooling down the fridge.” This may be true but remember, first, warm air is sucked out and the heat is absorbed by the freeze-on which cools the air. It is an act of taking away heat, not adding coldness.
Having said that, almost all so-called “dual” relationships are exactly the same way. I say almost because I haven’t gone through them all yet. Who knows, maybe there’s an anomaly. Anyway, I’ll just go through a few of them in this article.
Love and Hate. This can be rather controversial because of how difficult it is to define these terms. I have yet to find a dictionary that defines these terms objectively, without regard to certain circumstances or incidents such as toward certain people or for certain reasons. Because of this, allow me to use the Strong’s Concordance (published 1996) to define these words. The type of love of which I speak is found in Strong’s Concordance number 26 of the Greek dictionary: agape. The definition of this word is “affection or benevolence.” For further understanding, the definition of “benevolence” as defined by Dictionary.com is “n 1: disposition to do good [ant: malevolence] 2: an inclination to do kind or charitable acts 3: an act intending or showing kindness and good will [syn: benefaction].” The definition of hate as defined by the Strong’s Concordance comes from the Greek word Miseo (Strong’s 3404). It is defined as follows: To detest; by extension, to love less. Notice how it says “to love less.” Again, we have love being subtracted in order to get hate. According to these definitions, we have a relationship where love is either being added or taken away, but not hate. However, again, this is a controversial issue and any and all comments are welcome.
This relationship can even be seen in gravity and upward motion, in which case the upward motion is the controlling factor. For example, if I jump I am adding an upward velocity. As I go upward, my velocity decreases until it becomes negative and I fall back down. Of course, the reason for which my upward velocity decreases is due to gravitational pull. However, like darkness, coldness and hate, gravity is a constant. The only thing that changes is the upward velocity. Therefore, once again we do not have an equal relationship. Even though these two are more closely related than my other examples in that gravity does have an affect on my upward velocity, the theme of “equal opposites” still holds true. There is no equality in this relationship. Therefore, they are not exactly opposites. Therefore, they do not exactly have a dual relationship.
Life and death. Life is both added and taken away, but death is neither added nor taken away. Death is when life is taken away, but life is not when death is taken away.
White and black seem obvious to mention, but these two are a difficult pair to handle. Depending on what material is used to make the colors, the colors used to make the colors differ. While with paint, white is a lack of color and black is a mixture of all three primary colors, with light, white is mixture of all colors while black is the absence of light. When looked at from the perspective of light, the same holds true for the light and darkness argument. However, when it comes to paint, they literally are true equal opposites. I find it easy to dismiss this point, however, because paint doesn’t exactly have a lot of precedence in the philosophy of life. However, light does which is the sole reason I brought this up. It is the same as the light and darkness argument. To make the color white, more colors are added. To make darker colors, colors are taken away. You cannot add black to white light because black a complete lack of light. (Black light is not “black” light. It is “ultra-violet” light.)
Having mentioned black and white, the next logical step would be to introduce photo negatives. Unfortunately, I do not understand how certain colors have opposites/negatives or why. All I know is that there is some sort of circular spectrum, but I do not understand how or why the spectrum was made the way it was. As far as I am thus far concerned, the spectrum could be reorganized and we’d have a whole new set of color negatives. I do find it rather interesting, however, that red and blue are my favorite colors and they happen to be opposites. It makes me wonder if it is really because there is a true opposite relationship between these two colors and any others. And if this is true, then I further wonder if the relationship is equal in value or if it is similar to the other relationships I have mentioned.
Directions such as up and down and left and right also seem obvious to mention. However, these are spatial correlations and they do not have a relationship. They are simply in opposite directions. However, it’s interesting to mention that if you have one person traveling west and another traveling east starting at the same point on Earth, they will meet each other half way, and then meet each other again at the same point from which they started. Not only will they not get farther and farther forever and ever, but they will actually meet each other TWICE in a one round trip. I stumble to understand what this may mean, though.
A discussion on reflection will appear in a later article.
Again, any and all comments are welcome and appreciated. I cannot continue this article without your input. Thank you very much.
