Applied Polarity

We have all heard of horseshoe theory in regards to politics, although some find it controversial. The truth is, according to the Kybalion, all things diametrically opposed to one another are the same, simply a polarity. In this, all truths are half truths. If we say the light is dim in a room, we can also say the darkness is dim, technically. In reality our language usually doesn’t work like that, preferring one way of speaking opposed to its inverse. It’s 30 degrees hot, 30 degrees cold. As we go to the extreme of each pole, the results converge unto another to the same idea. Light is still an easy example to use. In the brightest light and darkest dark, we are blinded. With this post I want to explore some more of these polarities. Unity/Separation, I am/personality, spirituality/science.

According to the Ra Contact, there are only two philosophies for life if we put things in the broadest of terms. Serving others, and serving the self. In reality these are the same. In serving others we serve the self, and in serving the self we can serve others. You may wonder how serving the self serves others, but for instance, abusing a person can end up making them stronger than they were initially. Of course, this isn’t the way we want to go about things in order to help them. Sometimes serving others will leave them complacent, and serving the self at the expense of others can end up crushing the other if they are unable to overcome it. 

Here we can also see the polarity of unity/separation. I believe we can describe all polarities’ poles as separation vs unity. Unity would correspond to serving others, and separation corresponds to serving the self. At this extreme end of serving the self, it gets to the point where one is completely isolated and doesn’t have any interaction with others, to avoid potentially helping others grow. At this extreme point one is so isolated, they become all there is. And in serving the All, you help the All. The All being the individual who is infinitely separated from everything else. Of course we don’t really see these polarities taken to ad infinitum in reality, but hypothetically, in an infinite universe, they do exist.

Serving others to an extreme means you are completely selfless in everything you do. You are serving the All in the same way, but the All is the conglomeration of all things in this universe there is being one interconnected unit. If you believe in  the idea of holofractals, the infinity of a singular person is not any bigger than the infinity of all things united. Going back to light, photons separated to infinity come to darkness. Photons unified infinitely give you the brightest light. When to comes to material reality vs metaphysical reality we get a little more insight. In a totally material reality, everything is separate from one another. We pick up a rock, and see that it is separate from the earth, and from the hand. In this reality, philosophies like natural selection make the idea of serving the self the ideal method of survival in a purely material universe. Any ethics derived from this purely material existence are still based in self-preservation, a social code to ensure the benefits of existing in a society. 

The metaphysical reality is often described in a non-dual sense, that all is connected in that it is the one godly substance manifesting everything. Similar to how all life on earth is derived from the shared ancestor of one “species” of prokaryotic cells. In metaphysical non-duality, serving others truly is serving the self as there is the belief that all is one. But both the metaphysical and physical models of the universe are valid ways of understanding existence, although each have their limitations. 

Something I personally find immensely compelling is the proposed polarity of pure mindfulness versus the personality. The Kybalion talks about the polarity “I am”/Personality. I find it easier to understand by proxy by the polarity experience/reason. Experiences and reason are both ways to understand the universe. Experience is taking the entire picture into view (that we can perceive) whereas reason is breaking (or separating) that experience into smaller and smaller pieces in order to find constants and things that will allow the derivation of more constants or facts. Each have their own benefits. Experience can be spotty and unreliable in that it constantly changes and there is nothing to hold onto so to say, and is subjective. However, reason cannot fully fathom qualia such as color. We can learn the frequency/wavelength of the color, but that doesn’t tell us how it looks, how it is experienced. “I am” is purely experience, complete mindfulness. To the degree that one loses themself, forgets the conception of self. Personality is a sort of rule book for your behavior, involving generalizations that we try to maintain perpetually. “I am a night owl,” or “I dislike country music.” This doesn’t mean you don’t have the capacity to be a morning person, or that there isn’t a country song in existence that you like, but these beliefs percolate into our experience, seriously make a difference. Personality is experiencing the world looking inside, and “I am” is experiencing looking outside. And if we take both to an extreme, we can find permanence. If we hold something constant, like an objective material reality or an ego, to infinity, it will be infinitely permanent. Versus taking in the All as one changing object, that is permanent as well. It is a matter of perspective.

Going back to the idea of every truth being a half-truth shows two things: One, everything can only be perceived through duality, and two, conflict will always exist when trying to decide what is right. How can we know hot without cold? It would just be. Going to the second point regarding conflict, let’s take some court cases. In the first one, we will put the polarity at the point where one side seems overwhelming more in the ‘right’ and other in the wrong. Take a sociopath that shoots up a school, killing a bunch of people. Obviously this is wrong, but we have the capacity to place blame elsewhere. Sociopaths are created by their environment. So we can say, albeit unconvincingly, the sociopath is in the right with his motivations and the blame falls to the abusive parents, the unrelenting bullies at school, even the fault of the neighborhood cat that scratched him, inducing the anger to torture and kill it, which is a common trait of anti-social personality behavior.

Here, nearly all will be unanimous in the decision that the sociopath is guilty. No matter what happens to an individual, if they are committing mass murder that is a clear moral failing. Going to the other side of things in this particular example, we have vigilante justice. A good example is the man who beat his 5 year-old daughter’s rapist to death.

Had the father removed the threat to his daughter, tied the attacker up, and then calmly executed him it would clearly have been murder. On the other hand, human beings are human beings and the legal system should try as far as possible to treat them as they are rather than how they should be. I defy anyone to confirm that they would be able to limit their response precisely to removing the threat if they walked in on their 5-year-old daughter being raped… Residents of the small Lavaca County town were largely in support of the father, saying the victim deserved it…Sonny Jaehne, a Shiner native, told the Victoria Advocate: ‘He got what he deserved, big time. Friend Mark Harabis reiterated this: ‘I agree with him totally. I would probably do worse.

Charges were not even placed against him for the sake of formalities. We all know killing is wrong but… it is difficult to say this wasn’t justified. In reality no murder is justifiable, but who can help but support the father?

If we shift things more to the middle of the polarity, this is where we get more of the confusion and conflict inherent in all things. And in American culture, this conflict is frankly often partisan. One example, the hacker(s) that publicly posted all the information of users of a dating site specifically made for cheating. On one hand it freed many people from living a lie and potentially avoided them from being the victim of another affair. And I can’t help feeling that they deserved it to some degree, to have the truth exposed. On the other hand, these could be people who created an account in a time of weakness and never used it, whose lives are ruined. Two suicides were also directly related to this hack, one being a respected pastor, a chronic cheater, who was crushed by the shame. The recent Mangione shooting also leaves room for debate, as we have seen. On one hand, health insurance companies are playing with people’s lives, commonly ruining them for profits when individuals are in dire, often life threatening circumstances. On the other hand, the death of the UHC CEO won’t really change much in terms of progress for the little man, his life was used for a statement. I don’t doubt a health insurance CEO is probably a crappy person, but it is hard to say he deserved it when he was used as a tool for means to an end. Another debate that plagues our society is police brutality. Some cases we can clearly see what side of the spectrum the case lies on, but there are cases where there is more capacity for ambiguity.

Reading over each one it is easy to have a gut reaction to each of these. It can be easy for us to decide one or the other, especially if we know where our peers’ opinions lie. But the point is there is more room for an opposing argument when we get closer to this middle ground. 

Accepting polarity being a key concept of reality would be a great help to reconciling paradoxes, but more importantly understanding the nature of conflict. This sort of conflict is used in the US to separate us from each other, preventing a unity that could potentially threaten the people in power. If we can accept that all truths are half-truths rather than believing unconditionally that one is on the side of objective rightness and that the people on other side are evil morons, it would open room for negotiation, negotiation that is tremendously needed in our political climate and culture, absolutely necessary for loving our neighbors.