Living in a binary world
To some extent, we’re living in a binary world. It’s either this or it’s that and nothing is in between. It’s the basic foundation of human existence as we’re strung out between two extremes, which are pulling us each to its side, like two opposing forces. To be human is to try to achieve a balance between them, a nearly impossible task.
This fact also creates difficulties if you try to think outside the box and if you come across a thought, an idea or an insight, which seemingly dissolves a paradox and instead presents us for an entirely new perspective. Then follows the almost unsurmountable obstacle to try to get people to understand that this isn’t either this or that. Neither is it something wishy-washy in between, neither this nor that. It’s something else, something new. A new perspective which turns the old upside down or topple it altogether.
It’s like those optical tricks presented in a form of an image. At first glance it appears to be convex, but then, if you shift your look a bit, it appears to be concave instead all of a sudden. Or perhaps even better; one of those images which appears to be a confused mess of twirling colours at first glance, but if you manage to unfocus sort of, or look beyond the surface of it, to a point behind, everything suddenly changes and you look at a scenery with distinctive objects of all kinds and with depth as well. Everything is transformed.
It’s important to understand, though, that nothing has changed, really. What you saw at first glance is still there. In other words, what appears to be totally new, is rather that your new perception encompasses the either-or from earlier. Instead of looking at just one side, one way to perceive it, you’re looking at the full picture.
How is this relevant to our daily lives? Are there some concrete examples which may help to illustrate this?
There are many and perhaps the first which comes to mind, is everything political. You know, when left stands against right and conservatives oppose liberals.
Then we may travel back in time to the late sixties and early seventies. The so-called youth revolt happened, where the first generation after WW2 rejected the values of the former generation. The morale, the materialism, the hypocrisy and the politics. As good as everything in short.
It soon split into two general directions or tendencies, one of them political and the other spiritual for lack of a better term. The political turned into several fractions, all of them more or less revolutionary. We may lump the spiritual into a basket labelled New Age, to simplify it somewhat.
Later on came the new atheists, enforcing a tendency steadily growing over the last centuries, together with the growth and progress of the natural sciences, the complete rejection of religion as nothing but silly and primitive superstitions. We have also witnessed at the same time more or less, a growth of religious fundamentalism at the other end of the spectrum, a phenomenon which leaves many puzzled. The optimistic and prevailing view was that religious superstition would soon be relegated to the darkest corners of human activities, attracting yet fewer adherents as our scientific knowledge would grow. Instead, it seems like religiosity is coming back with a vengeance, often in the most extreme and perverted manner.
Maybe these two opposing world views – science and religion – can be said to exemplify the most basic expression of our binary world? Throughout history it has expressed itself though romanticism versus realism, for instance, and magic versus logic et cetera, but it’s still about the same, if you think about it.
Could it be that both can be said to belong to one reality? If that is so, how can we say that one part of it is wrong and has to be thrown out and discarded? Wouldn’t we then be left with only half of the whole? But is it even possible to include two opposite extremes which are totally in opposition to each other?
Let’s take a look at science and religion again. Do they have anything at all in common?
I think there is one thing: they both claim to tell the truth. The problem is that what is truth for one of them, is incompatible with the view of the other.
But why won’t religion go away, confronted with the vast amount of knowledge which we have gained through science? In spite of that, it seems to rebound with greater force, the more it’s being pushed back. Why?
Could it be that it’s an expression of something fundamental in ourselves, a part of our reality which science hasn’t been able to fully explain thus far? What if it isn’t about what meets the eye at first glance? What if religion isn’t about gods?
The next question is what could it be that science hasn’t been able to fully explain thus far? The first which comes to mind, is consciousness. It’s quite an elusive matter, perhaps because it isn’t of matter at all.
When we think of consciousness, we think of self consciousness first, but what if that is merely one expression of consciousness? What if consciousness in itself reaches beyond the limitations of space and time? If it does, it would mean that it’s not limited to physical bodies, but only expresses itself through them. To put it bluntly, it means that it exists outside of linear time and beyond solid matter, perhaps penetrating it.
Now, if we look at solid matter, we find that it’s not very solid at all. To say it with Niels Bohr, the Danish physicist: “Everything we call real is made of things that cannot be regarded as real.”
Someone will immediately react in a binary way, asking me if I think that we will continue after our physical death then? Not necessarily, because our egos through which we experience ourselves, have probably come to be through our interaction with matter and linear time, and as such it is most probably limited to it as well. So Wilfred Hildonen will most probably go out like a candle in the end, never to return. But if this being bearing that name, is but an expression of a consciousness which reaches beyond time and space, that consciousness will go on.
The problem is that we’re so stuck in our binary way of perceiving and thinking, that this might be difficult for us to grasp. It defies reason.
If there is anything to this at all, it might be that religion has been an attempt to say something about the inexplicable, because our words and languages are also based on our perception and interaction with and within the physical world, limited by time and space. How do you express something you do not have words for?
You have to use a symbolic language. Everything is then expressed in a symbolic way. Nothing is at it seems to be looking at it superficially. Every word means something else. Everything is a riddle. Nothing of it can be taken literally. Everything points to something else, something beyond.
And what if it still speaks of something which is a part of reality, yes, even something which is a part of our inner reality, a part we’re not aware of, because our minds and our perceptions are too limited? Why, it won’t go away then, will it, even if you declare it to be nonexistent. It will still be what it is, no matter what we say.
And perhaps that’s why religiosity won’t go away?
But why bother? Does any of this have any implications to our daily lives at all? The answer to that is that if it really is about a part of reality, it matters. Because reality matters.
