In my last article there was a comment asking why I use a modified version of the Yin Yang for the logo of this site, I’m often asked why I like the symbol so here it is. In short, I admire the perfect equilibrium of opposites it has. Maybe it’s because I suffer from C.D.O.P, it’s like O.C.P.D except in the right alphabetical order =P .
Over the years I’ve heard so many different interpretations for what it means to each individual; Good/Bad, Heart/Head, Love/Hate, Day/Night, Male/Female…
It’s remarkable cause they are all correct, but the Yin Yang hides some very insightful meaning underneath it.
When Yin Met Yang
I learned of its existence very young when a friend of the family called me ‘little yin-yang’. She found it funny how I could go from talking loudly, too much and running around causing havoc to sitting silently on the floor while reading a book in the blink of an eye. A few years later while drawing the yin yang in one of my school books I was perplexed by an observation; The white paper underneath the black ink was filling up the yang half of the circle with no need to use a white pencil, the black foreground couldn’t exist without the white background for contrast to create the visible symbol, they defined and compliment each other. I asked and asked around till I found someone who told me the meaning of the yin yang was an ancient Taoist philosophy that believed contrary forces of the world were interconnected and gave rise to one another.
I thought I might be looking too much into it but the next day in chemistry class holding a thermometer it occurred to me that our life was very limited. A maximum of 110°F and 96°F of minimum body temperature are our boundaries from dying of heat or cold, life as a human is reduced to a gap of 14°. What interested me though was the mercury liquid inside the thermometer, as the Tao described; it connected the hot part with the cold meaning it was the same thing in different levels/degrees, cold was a different degree of hot and vice versa. The definition of ‘Hot’ was ‘Less Cold’ and the definition of ‘Cold’ was “Less Hot’, the barrier between both was simply linguistic, there was no Hot and/or Cold, it should be HotCold like YinYang. Later that week we were learning about Owls and how they could catch prey in the dark with their night vision which again reminded me of the thermometer moment. For them the dark was day and in the same way we have the 14° restricting life gap, we also have our limited sight while their dark (or ‘less light’) moments were practically non existent. A few years later I read a discussion of an atheist professor of philosophy and his student dealing with the exact same thing (HotCold, LightDark, GoodBad) and I thought it was too incredible to be a mere coincidence which is what created my interest in learning more about Eastern philosophy.
I tend to be paranoid sometimes and find patterns where there aren’t any so I dismissed it as one more. A teacher gave me one of Nietzsche’s works for Christmas that year (lol) suggesting I’d like it, reading through it I stumbled upon a line; “If you want to go to heaven your roots must touch hell“, he wrote it in the “God is dead” context but it got me wondering that Good might be connected to Bad. What would have happened if the Devil was the one dead and not God?
We would all be happy in Paradise as Eve wouldn’t have been tempted. But what outcome would that have brought? The human psychology works a certain way; whenever we have something from birth or for a long period of time, we grow accustomed and take it for granted as we have forgotten or haven’t got anything else to compare it to making us believe we are deserving of it. The simplest example, when was the last time you opened the fridge and started doing cartwheels in excitement from what you saw inside? If you think about it we already live in paradise, or at least the idea of what paradise must be like in the eyes of those in a third world country. Food, shelter, medicine for our dying loved ones, clothes, air condition, technology, yet are we much happier than them? shouldn’t we be ecstatic all the time? We should feel ashamed of our problems compared to theirs… “This is unforgivable, my reading light doesn’t work! I’m going to complain to the airline once we land” – “Sir…you’re sitting on a seat THAT’S FLYING IN THE AIR!!! how amazing is that?”. Without the Devil we would have taken God’s paradise for granted cause what could we compare it too? Which brings us to the conclusion that without Bad, Good could not exist. How could we know what is Good unless we have Bad to compare it too? I believe the Devil deserves an apology, shouldn’t we be grateful towards him for providing some perceptual contrast?
It’s Too Bad It’s So Good
What is the difference between Good and Bad? most would say morality. So what is Morality? You can choose one of the the Utilitarian, Deontologist, Virtue ethics or Hedonist philosophical definitions and enter the debate of which is absolute. I think Good and Bad are same thing, empathetic intelligence a.k.a Wisdom, intelligence allows you to analyze the consequences of your actions, empathy makes you feel if it’s the most sensible choice. The definition of Bad is “Less Wise” on the southern part of the thermometer.
Everything works in polarities. Could saints exist without the concept of sinners? day without night? northern hemisphere without southern? males without females? hope without despair? life is full of polar opposites that not only define each other but compliment it by comparison making us aware not to take them for granted. They all exist together as two sides of the same coin. I believe the whole point of the yin yang is to help us understand that. Happiness is what we all aspire and want but the polar opposite of sadness is what makes it possible. “The Pursuit of Happiness” will always be a pursuit because if you ever managed to be happy all the time then it would lose all meaning, happiness is the state you’re in when you’ve just come out of sadness and are heading towards it, kind of like a roller coaster that if it didn’t go up how could it go down?. Sadness prepares you for happiness and vice versa, anything in between is dull and indifference like the flat straight rail of the roller coaster at the beginning before all the fun starts.
Personalities? take a “nice guy/girl” vs “narcissistic” personality, nice push over personalities worry about others before themselves and how they are perceived, little confidence, cling on too whomever shows them attention. Narcissists are egocentric and vein, basically they have a “I must be perfect to have some worth” attitude, enlarging their egos helps feel more worthy and better about themselves while putting others achievements down selfishly in order to feel superior. Superficially they are opposite personalities but deep down have the same problem, insecure low self esteem.
Our physical actions? Eating too much and then going on diets. Superficially they seem like they are making a big change but mentally they are still as obsessed with food as they were before only instead of thinking “I’m going to eat 20 of these” they think; “I bet that’s full of calories”, opposite thoughts but same obsession.
Conscious and unconscious? the harder you work and more active you are, the better you’ll sleep and the better you sleep the more energy you’ll have to work with.Awake and asleep are the too opposites here, that state of drowsiness/sleepy is the same as the indifference stated between happy and sad. Past is to Future as Yin is to Yang, both connected to the Present.
Newton’s Third Law of Motion
Newton stated, “For every action, there’s an equal (in size) and opposite (in direction) reaction force”. The day we learned this in High School I knew the Yin Yang had scientific validity. Aadil was a guy that sat next to me who got easily upset about others opinions and one day he told me “I hate Jessica, she laughs at my mistakes and says I’ll suck as a physicist, I’ll prove her wrong!”. One day I gave him a copy of the Goldbach’s conjecture math problem and said “You’re not smart enough to solve this”. He spent sleepless nights working on it coming to class in the worst shape till after two weeks he gave up and even wanted to quit our subject. I asked him “Nobody yet has been able to solve it but If a homeless man called you an idiot, would you get upset about it?” – “Uh no”, “then why put so much effort into proving me or anyone else wrong? the only thing you’ll prove is an attempt to hide your low self esteem by enlarging your ego through the validation of those who’s opinion you secretly value”, i.e; you can only hate those who you have some sort of liking, love or respect towards (if only respect towards their authority position or superiority) and love those who you’re capable of hating. We invest the same amount of attention/energy (Motion) in our minds towards hating someone obsessively as we do towards loving someone obsessively. If a mother loses her son to a murderer then that love can easily follow Newtons law and the same amount of love she had towards her son could turn to hate towards the one who took him. If some random person punches you on the street you can’t hate them because you don’t know them, it’s merely anger you have yet the word “Hate” is used so freely.
Married couples for example, many have an absurd fairytale idea that it will be eternal happiness and love. They haven’t come out of the same womb and had the exact same upbringing to share identical views on everything and even if they did, eternal love or happiness would be taken for granted and grow into becoming indifference. Indifference is a worse feeling than hatred as at least that shows involvement, deep down everyone seeks excitement, wildness and unpredictability in any type of relationship so fights are a subtle way of achieving it, others choose a poorer approach to gain excitement through adultery while a rare few use the wisest of an adventurous nature through trying new things; traveling, couples common interest activities or outdoorsy ventures.
Don’t forget though that hate can be just as powerful as love, reading Hitler’s autobiography ‘Mein Kampf’ he wrote; “Wheather there is an enermy or not you have to go shouting around the country that it is in danger” and sadly his right, whenever a country goes to war the suicide rates go down or whenever a family has feuds with another family immediately all differences between them are forgotten as they unite towards a common hatred. The only way our entire planet will unite and forget about it’s individual nations is by finding another planet to hate together.
Newton’s law and the Yin Yang don’t only apply to love and hate but to the most core polarities of them all, life and death.
I stated in a previous article that all fears can be traced back to death (through the uncertainty/unknown). Polarities in this case work through fears, the same amount you fear death you will live an equal amount restricted life. If you’re afraid of getting hit by a bus or car then you won’t leave your home and by not leaving your house you will miss out on much that life has to offer. If you’re afraid of heights you will be restricted to the ground, that means fear of flying and knowing life in other cultures, fear of the adrenaline rush in bungee jumping, climbing trees or even the views from a cliffs edge.
There’s an anecdote of Mark Twain which I don’t know if it’s true, he was sitting at a big dinner table when suddenly he yells for a Doctor. All the guests ask what for and he said; “I pinched my left leg and can’t feel it”, the lady to his right laughs; “That was my leg you were pinching”. He goes on to explain; “I suspected I might have a stroke some day and my physician told me before I get one the right side of my body will go numb so for the last 20 years I’ve been pinching my leg 20 times a day”. The story might originate from his famous quote; “I have been through some terrible things in my life, some of which actually happened” but as Shakespeare put it; “Cowards die many times before their deaths; The valiant never taste of death but once”.
Conclusion
Some say I’m difficult, confusing and a wee insane. I enjoy just as much being happy as I do being sad, using my heart as my head, mature as silly, nice as I am mean, being loved and hated too. It’s nice to be loved so deeply in a different light. Of course I have a productive preference for one over the other for instance, positivity takes as much attention in your head as negativity but one forces you to take action to do something while the other keeps you in comfort. Inconsistency at anything is perceived only in the eyes of those who are naively one sided.
Why condemn the sinners to change? they are the ones who define our beliefs, unhappiness to stop? the more of the opposing force you take away the more you will lose of the one you enjoy. I never understood why we celebrate the birth of babies but not old age deaths. Celebrate one and cry in the other, why are you celebrating if the baby is one day closer to his opposite of death? by accepting their birth you consequently accept the inevitable death, every breath a person takes is a step closer to death so shouldn’t we be crying? A life without death would be eternal and we’d take it for granted, if you cant die there’s no deadline to motivate us and live so both should be celebrated equally unless there’s some selfish hidden motive by the loved ones or understandable fear of uncertainty that may create guilt in the dying person.
Suffering in most cases is the refusal of pain and sadness, the claim that life should’t be painful and trying to fight it. Pain is part of happiness, it’s a painful fact, denial of a fact of nature is refusal like there’s something wrong with pain.It would be like attempting to jump out of the roller coaster because we are afraid of the imminent downhill. Choose one side and you destroy the whole rhythm of polarities, there has to be negative sacrificing for it to work.
Yin Yang are the two extremes together that create the whole picture, having only one side would be a half. Without the circumference the center cannot exist and without the center the circumference cannot exist. It is the ultimate equilibrium that keeps life moving.
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