Duality vs Polarity

Polarity is the fourth of only seven Hermetic Principles, which are the foundational laws of nature.
“Everything is dual; everything has poles; everything has its pair of opposites.” ~The Kybalion, Polarity: The Fourth Hermetic Principle
We make the distinction that duality and polarity are not the same thing. While polarities may be dual in nature, they’re not a duality. Duality is when things are wanted/unwanted (good/bad), but if you look at North/South, Questions/Answers, Life/Death, or Male/Female, there is not always a good/bad between them, just dual poles that bring meaning to the other; for instance, death brings meaning to life, and the two sexes bring meaning to each other. A good/bad duality of wanted/unwanted can also bring meaning, but it’s necessary to realize that it is a duality, and not a polarity, as polarities co-create together, but dualities are oppositional, and therefore do not create together.
 
A duality can still bring clarity to our desires though, for instance, I discovered through living in our house that lacks a fireplace that in the future, any house I have I’d like to have a fireplace in it from now on; the contrast between having a fireplace at a previous home and not having one in our current home has brought clarity to my life. Now I can either install one, or in the future ensure that my new home has one; the unwanted brought clarity to how I wish to experience my life. The process of discovering meaning from a wanted/unwanted duality is known in ancient times as alchemy, and now as intellectual synthesis, as the thesis and antithesis come together to create a synthesis
 
Marxism calls polarities and dualities “binaries”, and they wrongly classify all binaries as the wanted/unwanted variety. They erroneously believe that the wanted binary must have somehow victimized the unwanted binary, which is how they think it became the unwanted class in the first place; and this makes things such as male and female oppositional rather than co-creative. From there, Marxism then seeks to make things fair between the wanted and unwanted, by erasing binaries altogether through confusing and blurring the lines between the distinctiveness of each polarity pair. In the end, the intentional confusion, lack of clarity, and removal of distinctiveness between the binaries neuters one’s ability to discover meaning and purpose (the Logos) from the various types of contrast we’re provided in our lives. If polarities and dualities help us to discover and create meaning in our lives, where the process of such discovery is termed “Logocentric” (Christcentric), then Marxism and it’s proxies are the anti-Logos, or literally the “anti-Christ”.
 
The following graphic will give you a good idea of what deconstructionism, which is a Marxist philosophy, is attempting to do by deconstructing Western culture, and all of the polarities/binaries that bring meaning into our lives:

 

Not only does Deconstructionism deconstruct the meanings found within words and concepts, it also deconstructs binaries, because they offer the contrasting experiences through which we’re better able to find meaning in our lives, and are therefore better able to define and understand our purpose. For example, it is through a man’s experiences with women that he’s better able to know and understand his masculinity and purpose, but if men or women were to be deconstructed and rendered meaningless, the value of BOTH masculinity and femininity would suffer, as they would no longer hold any meaning without the other to provide them contrast.

Contrast is the mechanism from which we’re better able to refine and clarify our thinking and intentions, and while contrast can exist between wanted and unwanted binaries, such as good and bad, it can also exist between co-creative polarity pairs such as men and women, questions and answers, and North and South. However, a foundational premise of Deconstructionism conflates the two categories, making all binaries into the good/bad dichotomy, including the co-creative ones just mentioned, and that the good is therefore subjectively privileged in relationship to the bad. This makes a binary such as men privileged in relationship to women; and this is why Deconstructionism deconstructs all binaries—to make it more equitable between the good and the bad, even when they’re not actually a good/bad binary.

Unfortunately, without experiencing contrast in our lives, the concept of self-knowledge and knowing thyself would be pointless/meaningless, as would the concept of individual distinctiveness—but maybe that’s the whole point of Deconstructionism in the first place?

~Nathan Martin

 

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