A LACK OF DUALITY
23 NOVEMBER 2022 (15 MIN READ)
We are currently situated in one of the most divisive eras in human history. When probed about the causes of this unfortunate situation, most point to the outgroup’s stupidity, faulty social media algorithms, or the corruption of the mainstream media. Although these causes all have some truth to them, the real truth is hidden beneath the surface: a personal inability to hold space for the possibility of multiple truths. When we see what we believe to be the ultimate truth, we are quick to deny not only any possible other truths, but also label them as ignorant or stupid. This mindset keeps us stuck in the same rigid belief systems and makes us cast judgment onto anyone who thinks differently, rather than understanding where they’re coming from and finding common ground. Even though we mostly see this divisiveness show up in political issues, the inability to hold multiple truths begins with an individual inability to see and accept the range of emotions and personalities that exist within all of us, which then transcends to the collective level. For instance, when we only perceive ourselves in the most favorable light, we tend to unconsciously repress sides of ourselves that remain in suffering, blinding us to the multiple realities that exist inside of us at all times, making us more likely to be ignorant to the truths that we don’t want to see in the external world, since we refuse to first see them in ourselves.
This article will be making the argument that one’s inability to hold multiple truths is causing the mass division we are currently facing, an inability that stems from a disability to witness and accept the multiple realities that exist within ourselves. The more we open this door to a personal discovery of multiple truths within the individual psyche, the more it will project out into the real world and heal the division we are currently facing. As a result, we will be more open to experiencing and witnessing multiple truths, keeping us away from the rigid belief system of singular truth that keeps us engaging in division.
POLITICS
To kick the meaty portion of this article off, we will begin by understanding how a lack of individual duality is feeding the most polarizing political discourse we encounter in today’s day and age. This argument of a lack of duality came to me when I found myself alone on an island of being vehemently pro-choice when it came to abortion, but also standing firmly against mandated COVID vaccination. Every single person I encountered was either pro-life and pro-vaccine choice, or pro-abortion choice and pro-vaccine mandates. This black-and-white attitude made no sense to me, as both sides were being hypocritical in their beliefs. Both argued for bodily autonomy, while also arguing against it at the same time. So, being the curious thinker I am, I began asking myself what’s causing this hypocrisy? And here is the moment I landed at the concept of duality. Most people who stand on either side of the political aisle cannot see any truth in what the other side says, regardless if what they say is actually true. When the left went berserk on vaccine mandates, and nobody had the balls to investigate the consequences of this or deviate from the consensus, as well as insulting anyone who disagreed with the mandates, I officially became a disaffected liberal. When I began approaching identifying myself as a republican due to their more compassionate thinking on vaccine freedom, I quickly saw the same exact playbook that the left used with vaccines when Roe v. Wade was overturned: no big figure on the right denounced the outright attack on freedom and they insulted anyone who tried to argue against their beliefs. After this moment, I chained myself to the middle of the aisle, refusing to identify with any political party.
Once I became disillusioned with both parties, I began to hold a duality for seeing truths on both sides of the aisle. For example, being able to call out good policies on both sides, while also identifying areas of hatred or weakness. All of a sudden, I started to have compassion for the arguments made by both sides and I was able to have peaceful discussions with anyone on either side, avoiding the intense outrage most face when discussing different political opinions. What happened here was that once I stopped identifying with a political party, I escaped the groupthink that came with that identification, allowing myself to see some truth in ALL opinions, rather than just the ones that came with my favored party. It’s a lot to ask for everyone to suddenly leave the teams that have brought their egos so much comfort, but what I can take away from this that is more applicable, is that the answer to escape all this division is to allow ourselves to see truth in the opposite side. To display what this can look like, let’s take the controversial topic of COVID vaccine mandates.
Even before it was known that COVID vaccines don’t prevent transmission and Pfizer misled the public by advertising its vaccine as preventing transmission without testing for said prevention, I always stood strongly against mandating the vaccines. Fueling my belief was the extensive research I had done on the lies peddled by Big Pharma companies in order to advance mass profits at all costs. Additionally, it didn’t sit well with me to force people to take a brand new type of vaccine that we would not know the side effects of for a very long time. Lastly, understanding how health works beyond the Western medicine approach of just medicating any illness, each body requires such a different therapeutic strategy to heal disease that a one-size-fits-all answer is never correct in my eyes. The combination of these three notions made me wholeheartedly believe that it was unacceptable to demand anyone to take this shot against their free will. At first, I was a huge snowflake and got triggered whenever anyone called me a bigot or asserted that I was being stupid. Once I understood the rules of division, I realized that I had to see some truth in the other side to not allow this divisive topic to add to the already too-high pile of hatred in the world. So, I started to ask myself, what’s true for the other side? They were manipulated by the mainstream media to live in a state of complete fear, where they were told to believe that they were going to die if a vaccine did not eventually come out. Finally seeing the silver bullet in the flesh, they believed that this was their only shot of survival, as well as being manipulated to believe that anyone who didn’t get it would be a risk to their chance of living.
Although what they believe may not be entirely true, what is indisputably true is the way they feel. Those who believe I am a bigot for not ever wanting vaccine mandates are operating off of a state of complete terror and fear, which was created by a manipulated media with ulterior motives. Having seen the trauma and fear behind the words of those who stand on that side, I completely understand where they are coming from, and it becomes impossible for me to hate on their belief. Possessing that sense of understanding destroys any sense of division, often inviting the person in front of you to be more open to what you have to say, because although you don’t necessarily agree with them, you can understand their truth. Personally, I try to take ANY divisive topic and practice this exercise with it, so I can avoid division and lead with love wherever I can. In order to heal this division, we all must try our best to do this.
This section has illustrated how political division is bred by not allowing oneself to see any truth in the other side, creating the argument that one of the answers to this division is to always allow yourself to see some truth in whatever opinion comes your way, holding a duality in your mind of multiple truths existing at the same time, rather than just one. Similar to how we write off any opinion that is associated with the party we stand against, we also write off people in this culture who say or do something that the consensus doesn’t like. The creation of this sort of culture also comes down to the inability for most people to possess duality in their minds, which in this case comes down to not being able to see the good in someone if we notice one speck of evil.
CANCEL CULTURE
Although cancel culture is often associated with the left side of the aisle, it does not necessarily stay there. We currently live in an era where we have two mass groupthinks occurring at the same time in America: left versus right. The matrix of the left forces you to not only believe in hot topics such as vaccine mandates, the Black Lives Matter movement, being pro-choice, or trans ideologies, but they also recommend to never question them, as well as condemn anyone who speaks out against them. Similarly, the matrix of the right demands you believe and not question things, such as anti-vax sentiments, being pro-life, believing in God, or questioning the trans movement, as well as hate on those who think differently to these sentiments. Although I do believe that the left does a worse job at this than the right, the extreme right is arguably the worst substrata of these groups at this type of thinking. Since all sides of the aisle find themselves engaging in this divisive behavior, it’s important to find out what’s actually causing it, so we can move forward and collectively heal. At its core, the thinking of cancel culture comes down to attaching the sensation of a negative trigger to somebody’s whole identity, refusing to see them as anyone outside this hateful feeling.
For example, consider if a famous celebrity who was a Hollywood star suddenly came out in support of Roe v. Wade being overturned. If this were to occur, everyone on the left would see this person as an evil scumbag and only be able to see them that way after learning that information. Similarly, those on the right would suddenly call that person a hero and only see them that way due to one opinion that aligned with their matrix. What this unfortunate societal habit does is limit people to one thing they may believe in. Even though this theoretical Hollywood star could be an amazing husband, father, and community member, all the left would see them now as would be a hateful bigot, based on one belief. In other words, once they smell one belief that may be “bad” in their eyes, all good in that person suddenly leaves their soul. On the other hand, the right would only see this person as a hero, potentially leaving behind the bad things they could have done throughout their lives. This is where the lack of duality comes into play. It is fundamentally incorrect to assume everything about a person based on one thing they believe in. We all have good and evil inside of us, as well as the potential for an extreme of either one too. We all have the potential for rehabilitation. We are all deeply flawed people who cannot always be perfect. And most importantly, we all have the capacity for love. When faced with someone who presents a contrarian opinion, we have to remember these universal truths about humanity. One can feel deeply disappointed and hurt by somebody’s belief, but that should never take away from the fact that the person in front of them is a complex human being who always has the ability to change for the better.
In order to defeat this highly toxic era of cancel culture on both sides, we need to develop this duality of seeing the possibility of multiple truths in other human beings beyond just one thing they believe in. To make this process more automatic and less intellectually forced, we must begin reckoning with the multiple realities that exist in our minds, especially the ones that we don’t want to see.
SHADOW WORK
Uncovering the repressed realities that exist in our unconscious minds is referred to as shadow work, which I have previously defined as: “the process of becoming aware of the unconscious mechanisms that negatively influence your behavior, as well as integrating that newfound knowledge into your psyche, becoming one with your darkness in the process.” This can look like tracing back a repeated, negative behavior to a point of trauma that keeps resurfacing in the present moment. For example, getting angry at a partner if they keep aggressively telling you to pick up after yourself, and realizing that the anger is transferred from how you felt when your mother beat you when you left things lying around as a kid. When you use a trigger to uncover a repressed trauma, you bring a piece of your shadow to light. And with that newfound knowledge, you can choose to alter your behavior, or keep going down the same dark road of repression. Coming to terms with how darkness operates in our consciousness—and how it can give rise to evil if left unchecked—will open our eyes to the complexity of human beings, as being both capable of good and evil, potentially reducing our chances of putting people into boxes based on one thing they think.
Once we recognize that we have real darkness within us, such as noticing our capacity for occasional violence, hatred, racism, misogyny, etc., while noticing that we have a deep capacity for good that can help us combat this darkness, we will also see similarities in every other human being. For instance, if somebody in the public spotlight says something hateful or does something wrong, then we can hold that person accountable, but at the same time have compassion and hope, as we have noticed similar forms of hate pop up in our consciousness and healed ourselves from it, projecting that subjective experience outward and believing that this person has room for love and healing. In contrast to someone who has never done shadow work, they would immediately categorize this famous person as evil and refuse to see any capacity for good in them, stemming from the fact that they don’t know what it’s like to witness darkness within their psyche and correct it with love, so they can’t project that subjective reality outwards.
Healing the division we face societally all begins at the individual level. And the individual healing required to make this shift is allowing ourselves to see the duality that exists inside ourselves, specifically the awareness that we have both good and evil living inside us, and that with love and understanding, we can heal the evil within. Once we truly understand this complex reality and repeatedly witness ourselves go through it, it will become impossible to put people into a box of hatred based on one thing they said, as we will be able to automatically notice the duality of that person and thus, their infinite capacity for good. However, what do we do when somebody we care about refuses to compromise on something hateful that they said, repeatedly showing us no signs of love or goodness? How can we move away from division in these emotionally frantic moments?
UNDERSTANDING EACH OTHER
We’ve all been there, when someone you care about goes off on an aggressive rant that you deem as hateful, and no compromise or love seems to exist in their system at that moment. At this moment, rage fills your body and that emotion leads you to cast that person into an evil box. From doing the shadow work that was described in the previous paragraph, you can quickly correct this perspective and see that this person is more than just this opinion, as well as see that they have a high capacity for good and the ability to love. However, while that knowledge is useful in order to not become hateful like the person in front of you, it does not do too much in terms of moving the conversation forward in a loving direction. To do so, you must try your best to look past the words coming out of the person’s mouth and attempt to understand the pain that is causing them. If we truly believe something and defend it at all costs, then we do so because the opposite of it has deeply hurt us for some reason or brings up emotions that we don’t want to deal with. I am not saying this to defend people believing hateful things, but I am saying it to shine a light on what causes people to believe those things. Every single person whose hateful opinions I have gradually changed came from me sitting down and emotionally understanding their pain. Once I spoke to that pain with love and understanding, they were much more likely to hear me out and lose the vibration of hate in that moment, giving room for love to enter their consciousness and see the truth on the other side.
Human beings at this current point in reality are fighting hate with hate. Whether it be the woke movement using racism to fight racism or republicans yelling out, “snowflake” whenever a differentiating belief is raised, both sides are just adding fuel to the fire. Although this sounds unbelievably corny, the only way to defeat hate and come together is to lather hate with love whenever we have the opportunity. But don’t get me wrong, if somebody is threatening you physically or calling you racial slurs, you have full permission to bitch slap them. I’m more so talking about the moments when you hear someone you care about go off on a rant that you deem as hateful. The only way you can change them is to meet them with love, which starts with trying your best to understand the pain that is fueling their belief. To get good at this sort of understanding, you must come to terms with how your pain and your trauma have fueled the beliefs you hold dear to your heart. For instance, I know that a lot of my distaste towards Big Pharma comes from the fact that I believe my mother’s death could have been avoided if she was medically treated properly. Or, I understand how my strong belief in a woman’s right to choose is due to the fact that I have witnessed women close to me go through the process and how brutal, yet liberating it can be. Whatever the reasoning may be, once you start to notice how your beliefs are crafted by emotionally charged experiences, you will begin to see the same reality in other people, making your capacity for love and understanding grow tenfold—both necessary ingredients to heal the division we currently face.
