A Contradictory world

When I first started thinking about the world I wondered if my ideas and conclusions about it were right. I needed to confirm them. Then I happened upon philosophy where I discovered thinkers who had similar ideas to mine. That’s one thing I like about philosophy. It confirms things.

One of the first ideas that popped into my head when I started contemplating our world is that it is full of contradiction. Not only that, we blindly and deliberately encourage contradiction. I noticed that we praise and promote one thing with great vigor and conviction and then proceed to do the opposite. For instance, we extol the virtues of democracy but then we turn around and promote with equal vigor and conviction an often-undemocratic institution like capitalism. Though these two systems manage to coexist with each other they often clash and cause friction. To my mind this contradictory relationship under scores a need for a measure of institutional conflict in our lives. We reside, then, in a polemic world. Not only do we need it but also as we have progressed this contradictory, polemic nature has increased. We revel in it. Hegel is the one who put me on the path of unraveling this mystery.

Hegel’s critical thinking basically took place in the field of contradiction when he spoke about change, conflict and the dialectic The dialectic is the process of contradictory ideas clashing and transforming each other. Change is the inevitable outcome of the dialectical process. Conflict is the inevitability of contradictory ideas engaging each other in the dialectic. Hegel is the thinker who confirmed my deeps feelings about the world being the product of contradictory elements.

Why did I focus on contradiction in the first place? Perhaps it has to do with the fact that I am an Aquarian, the most contradictory sign of the zodiac. Seriously, though, perhaps it has more to do with my being a creative person. Creative people have this intuitive understanding about contradiction and how contradictory items and opposites mingle with each other to create things. For instance, an architect can create a building space because he understands the relationship between the contradictory elements of length, height and depth. A writer creates interest and tension by bringing together contradictory emotions. An artist draws on the same principle to create a picture, in the same way Nature has draw on contradictory, binary opposites to create and sustain itself. In the contradiction, like in the dialectic, things become animated and alive. Perhaps the real reason I focused on contradiction is because I, like everybody else, live in it and am made of contradictory parts just like everything else is in the universe. It is at the heart of everything. The ancient Greek philosopher Heraclites confirmed this when he said, if you do away with contradiction you do away with reality.

The contradiction I am really interested in is that which relates to human governance. A “Young Hegelian”, Francis Fukuyama, who explained why Democracy triumphed over Communism, sparked this interest in me. What registered with me is his writing about Democracy having two components, capitalism and democracy, capitalism being its essential economic branch and democracy the political branch. (I use “Democracy” as one would use “Day” to describe a phenomenon made up of two separate parts of it, night and day.) Basically his argument boiled down to this, Communism collapsed because it wasn’t composed of two separate branches, branches that could have counterbalance and energized the other and the whole. Democracy won out because it took Nature’s course of incorporating two separate and contradictory aspects of itself. Hegel said that humankind needs conflict, and its reflection, to remain alive and awake. He could just as well have being talking about human governance. Communism certainly didn’t have the stimulating conflict of opposing and competing ideas that may have kept it alive and awake.

Ironically, it was a Russian philosopher who first took issue with the need for contradiction in human governance. This philosopher,Berdyaev, was tossed out of the Soviet Union by Lenin for his insight. As someone described it, he foresaw the inevitable dangers of attempting to build a society in accordance with a single theoretical principle. Of course, he was talking about Communism, which was based on a single minded, non-contradictory principle. He predicted that such a government would lead to a totalitarian regime. He was right.

Why do we need institutional polemics and the conflict/change it engenders? I will rely on something Kant said to answer that question. He said that humankind is inherently lazy and complacent. From personal experience I know what he means. So my answer is this: We need it because it’s agitating and motivating. The conflict and change polemics springs upon us creates new situations that challenges and keeps us active and busy. It forces us to think and seek new solutions. Without this polemic churning we would atrophy and not remain alive and awake.

Here is an interesting observation that somebody made: A sign of intelligence is the ability to hold two contradictory ideas while still functioning well. There is something salient in that. Our grappling with and balancing contradiction has helped us grown smarter and more capable.