On Dualism

And air-conditioning

Our meeting room was too cold. Someone said. And we all agreed. It was cold. Very cold. We should do something about the coldness.

And someone did do something. Someone switched off the air-conditioning.

And all was well.

But all was not well. Something was wrong.

We had all agreed that the room was cold. We had judged that part of the universe (our meeting room) as a cold place. But is there some universally accepted convention for judging a place as cold? Something like “If it is less than 25 degrees, it must be cold?”

We had all accepted some such convention. But there was nothing to say that that there was anything right about that convention.

On the one hand, our behaviour was completely normal. Fear of cold is a very natural instinct. Countless humans would have died of cold. And countless others would have saved themselves from dying, by feeling the cold and taking remedial action (like switching off air-cons).

But on the other hand, it didn’t feel right. Making-up an arbitrary convention.

After all, don’t such conventions lead to most problems in the word?

For example,

• If you arbitrarily judge the future to be a bad place, you feel anxiety.
• Judge the future to be a good place, you feel hope.
• Judge the past to be a bad place, you feel guilt.
• Judge the past to be a good place, you feel pride.
• Judge that something should exist in your future, you feel greed.
• Judge that something should not exist in your future, you feel hatred.

All these our conventions. Resulting from our dualistic view of the world.

The solution to these problems of dualism is not switching poles. Because if you switch poles, you still end up with a pole. Another pole. But a pole, none-the-less.

Hence,

• If you reverse anxiety, you end up with hope.
• Reverse guilt and you end up with pride
• Reverse greed and you end up with hatred.
• Reverse hatred and you end up with greed.

The problem is not anxiety, hope, guilt, pride, hatred or greed. But dualism itself.

Give up dualism, and all problems vanish.