19 March 2024

Structure

“¿What am I trying to do here?”

Essentially, I’m trying to think about a topic and resolve a conflict which is usually caused by some weird and unnecessary dichotomy!?

As of October 2020, I have posted a page regarding my use of symbols, and I am going to try to stick to the structure below. If the writing does not contain this structure, then it was likely written before this (or it’s meant to be more of a story than an analysis). This entire page is written as more of a “note to self” so I stick to it, but feel free to borrow the structure if you find it useful!

?Emotional THESIS

Sometimes we experience an emotion. A feeling (?). Other times it might be an idea. A thought (?). The question is whether we act on it or not (?). Do we consciously choose the thought? Do we impulsively act on feeling? What is the relationship (?) between a thought and a feeling, anyway? Or between and idea and an emotion?

(Btw, sometimes I will start with a Rational THESIS and follow it up with the Emotional ANTITHESIS. The order is not important, the colors are)

?Rational ANTITHESIS

That is why it’s important to seriously look into and consider the [allegedly] ‘opposite side’. Things are never really (⚫) black vs white (⚪). Maybe binary logic worked for our primitive ancestors, and it carried us all the way to our black and white televisions as well as the Boolean algebra we use for computer systems.

But hey, I’m a Millennial, so welcome to the 21st Century!
Shit started off real crazy for the first 19.75 years but here we are!

Anyway, rather than being ruled by cognitive dissonance, which will likely lead us to a bipolar conflict **cough, Cold War**, I’m a proponent of a different type of decision-making moral logic. In order to ‘choose sides’, make decisions, and take moral actions there must be some sort of balance.

Ignoring the murderous undertone, of course ?

Of course it’s not always easy to choose between two opposites (?/?) or merge them (?) before we decide (?). And I’m not gonna lie to you, finding a middle ground between two opposites is both time-consuming and excruciatingly complex. It’s much easier to simply vote for one side or another and move on with your life, especially if you have a ‘good one’ with plenty of opportunities for entertainment
(#socialAnalogyMoreThanIntended).

?WILLFULL (SYNTHESIS)

So I guess the question is really: where is our humanity headed?

Are we destined for an eternal struggle between:

¿Space vs Time?
¿White vs Black?
¿Right vs Wrong?
¿Smart vs Dumb?
¿Wealthy vs Poor?
¿Males vs Females?
¿Religion vs Atheism?
¿Conservatives vs Liberals?
¿Collectives vs Individuals?
¿This now
or that later?

The paradox of it all is that deep down I genuinely believe that I just solved all of these and told you the answer. It’s not about having all the answers, but about knowing how to arrive at answers. Once upon a time, a relatively clever dude said “a new type of thinking is essential if mankind is to survive and move toward higher levels.”. So this is me saying “heyo, look over here! I think I found something juicy!“?? Here’s my little “Theory of Everything” and I mean f*cking everything.

All of this is useless if we don’t use it to change things. What’s the point of solving everything if you don’t change anything? Yet I wasn’t born yesterday. I know, it’s a human instinct to resist change, especially when it comes to matters of identity/equality. And at the start of the 21st Century literally everyone is so obsessed with ‘intelligence’ that our first instinct is to argue back before we listen. Because someone else being right, or someone else saying something ‘smarter’ than us is apparently a humongous existential threat that we need to eliminate rather than integrate. Hence why people who change the world often get killed for it.

Well, you know that old saying “If you can’t beat them, join them“? That’s exactly what we are gonna do here. Beat things by uniting them. And if you reeeally want to argue, I swear to the existence of your Gods that you will not beat me. Not on this one.

???
¡¿Why?!
zlbv pdc;lzv… How dare you insult ___?!?!
You think you are sooo f*cking smart, huh? You cocky piece of S*@t!

Nah dude, chill. I’m not gonna fight you. I’m not even saying I’m smarter in any way, I just like to listen?. And I have a crazy idea that we might need to explore but you’re gonna need to listen and understand all of it first. It’s not really an “idea” they way you think. It’s actually a way of thinking to define ideas/people/places. And if you really want to turn this into a [politicized] battle of wits/wills I will always have the winning strategy: I’ll rile you up and then ceremoniously give up! ? So join me, please.

The whole point of this strategy/structure is that you don’t have to choose sides between you vs me, (⚫) black vs white (⚪) or lump a bunch of binaries into some weird competitive and political tribal dichotomy (?/?). We can in fact all be friends (?) and decide things together (?) while acknowledging and celebrating each others similarities and differences, it’s just going to take a little more time and effort than we’d like.

Anyway, it’s obviously going to take an eternity [or two] to get on the same page so that we can start writing together. No need to try and summarize everything here. Rather than fighting or arguing, I hope we will approach things differently and listen to what another wise person once said: “do I not destroy my enemies when I make them my friends?

Hope you enjoy the reading, friends!?

2=1/sonderbodhi/both-yet-neither