The Paradox

One of the first books I read about globalization was “Global Paradox” by John Naisbitt. I bought it because I wanted to learn more about globalization. As Naisbitt put it, there is a paradox about globalization in that it makes the world economically bigger and smaller at the same time. After finishing the book I wanted to know more about the paradox.

Naisbitt took it for granted that the reader instinctively knows what the paradox is. Most of use have a cursory knowledge of what it is. It is a phenomenon. But what is a phenomenon?

Knowing the paradox is not easy. I couldn’t find a satisfactory explanation for it. But, then, I was not thinking of it in the traditional, philosophical sense. I was thinking of it as a mechanism, as an action thing, as a phenomenon. What I found instead were explanations for things inanimate. I interpreted Naisbitt’s global paradox to be organic, something that animates and motivates things. He portrayed it as a force that causes change in the world, not as something lifeless and benign.

Hoping to find support for my interpretation, I looked up the paradox in a philosophy dictionary. There, however, I found it described as an abstraction, difficult to understand. There was nothing animating or life-like about it. Then I read a book that discussed the role of the paradox in writing. It described the paradox “as the ‘schizophrenic presentation’ of two or more possibilities, each having equal claim to validity”. It also said that the paradox is a “child of polarity, a linguistic construct by which we give expression to our polarized human existence”. As a linguistic construct it animates what is written through a ‘creative tension’, generated by the ‘schizophrenic’ polemics it incapsulates. A Shakespearian example was given to show this linguistic construct at work where Juliet calls Romeo a "beautiful beast", two conflicting ideas but in combination very revealing and animating. A physical example of the linguistic paradox at work would be the opposing poles of electricity, each also having equal claim to validity, schizophrenically engaging in the creation of energy. This is how I see the paradox, as a power house, a sort of dialectical dynamo.

“The paradox is a child of polarity.” The paradox, then, resembles something in nature, like the the opposite poles of electricity. One of my articles was about contradiction and it being central to reality. Contradiction also is a child of polarity. The paradox and contradiction are related. Contradiction is the stuff of dialectic engines. The paradox is also a dialectical engine. This engine animates, energizes not only the written text but also the world we live in. It also creates and makes things possible. For instance, if the paradoxes of up and down, in and out didn’t exist we wouldn’t have the space we live in.

In many respects globalization and paradox are the same. Both are events. Both have deep meaning and create situations that are puzzling. They both send out mixed signals. Both are mechanisms that facilitate the human enterprise.

The other day I read a blog article that reminded me of the paradox. It presented an explanation for the metaphysical nature of the world. I think it did a good job. The article was entitled "entropy and dialectic".

The article explains that those two events or forces have put pressure on the world to become what it is, globalized and similar. Basically it is this, entropy deconstructs systems of culture and governance all over the world and as they reconstruct and renew themselves they become more alike, following the principles of the second law of thermodynamics about open and closed systems. Communism is a good example of a closed system which suffered permanent entropic damage and then reconstructed itself in its rival's image.

The dialectic, the article argued, adds the paradoxical element to globalization. It is the brain working, saying that despite the growing similarity we don't want everything to be the same. Culture resists sameness. In resisting while also melding with similarity we become wiser and more sophisticated because we are challenged with new concepts and alternatives. The paradox educates and improves our skills because it engages us with conundrums that require dialectical thinking and solutions.

Though entropy and dialectic are two different occurrences they are related. Entropy itself is part of a paradoxical relationship administrated by a form of the dialectic. Entropy is one side of the thermodynamic coin, the side which is about decline and disorder. The other side is about conversion and renewal. Entropy applies to thermodynamics' second law which refers to decline. Renewal applies to the first law. The second law says that in the end systems will come to an end. But the first law says that systems can continue if they are managed well and rejuvenated. What renews and rejuvenates systems is a type of dialectical, polemic action that converts ‘energy’ from less to more, from bad to good, as the first law says. These laws highlight the fundamental paradoxical nature of our world.

The world is always in flux. This flux is due to the polemic nature of the world. Naturally, it is paradoxical flux.