Being Free

How strong are we? How free? Can we overcome the limitations on us? One who has concluded that all can be seen as right and that by changing our understanding we can change our reality, would certainly be tempted to conclude that all limitations on us are of our own making. This would secure for us triumph over all our conflicts, complete freedom. It doesn't appear that we have exactly that conclusion at our fingers. We see limitations around us everywhere, in the weather, the traffic, our captivity to our drives for nourishment, rest and love, and to a less inevitable extent, in certain efforts to improve our lives that never seem to come to fruition—getting the most money, getting the best of any thing. Sometimes we don't even want the best, but just something in particular that remains elusive. These obstacles may not be insurmountable regardless of whether these impositions are from outside or within ourselves because, even if there are impossibilities, we can see in them in a paradox that provides the context freeing us of their limitation.

As was pointed out in Strength, that you can change your options is contradictory. If we have the option to create a new option, then at least in some sense we had that new option all along. It isn't a mere mistake of language creating this contradiction. An option truly is not ours to choose if we don't realize we have it, though through the change of recognition we come to realize and therefore have the option. Taking the contradiction as actual, and indicative of multiple contexts, rather than change as actual and the contradiction a mere mistaken identification of states before and after a change, we simplify our understanding of our lives. It also shows us a way to recast our limitations as not limiting, and therefore as contradictions that point to a wider context free of those limitations. Below we will first explain how contradiction can function without creating meaninglessness, and then look at the implications that has on our ability to achieve what we want.


Why should we take contradiction to exist, allowing language to state and us to conceive paradoxes, rather than take them as misnomers, mistaken identification of distinct things? One compelling reason is that we can reason with contexts to disambiguate contradictions, but we can't remove contradictions from language. As was pointed out in All Is Right, the Liar's Paradox makes contradiction unavoidable. First, let's briefly consider why we normally can't take contradictions to be actual.

Traditional logic and just plain common sense tells us we can't allow contradictions to be true. “If you're going to take something patently impossible to be true, you may as well take anything your wild imagination desires to be true, which will no doubt be great fun until the imagined facts fail to line up with reality once too often!” In traditional logic, the discussion can be summarized as follows:

I.  If you are given two statements and told at least one of them is true,


and further told that the first statement is false,


what do you conclude? That the second is true,


because one of the two must be and the first isn't. We can infer (c) from (a) and (b).

II.  At the same time, whenever you are given that some one statement is true,


you can take any other statement, true or not, and claim truthfully that at least one of the two is true.


We can take Statement 2 to be ‘2 + 2 = 5’, thus deducing “Statement 1 or ‘2 + 2 = 5’ is true”. There is no problem here because we know Statement 1 is true, so yes at least one of those two statements is true even though ‘2 + 2 = 5’ clearly is not. We can infer (e) from (d).

The problem with contradictions is that they allow us to conclude anything at all using these two methods of inference. Suppose we have a statement, call it Paradoxical Statement, that is both true and false. Given Paradoxical Statement is true, we first can infer “Paradoxical Statement or ‘2 + 2 = 5’ is true” following method II. Then, given “Paradoxical Statement or ‘2 + 2 = 5’ is true”, which we just proved, and that also Paradoxical Statement is false, we can infer ‘2 + 2 = 5’ following method I. We deduced from Paradoxical Statement that ‘2 + 2 = 5’. So from any contradiction we can conclude two plus two equals five, or anything else for that matter, true or false.

When we suggest taking contradictions as actual we aren't denying the reasoning just given. The above analysis depicts our world as having one state described by a division into two categories, true and false. We need the above analysis to hold true. It provides the correspondences in the duality of our distinctions. Where we discover a contradiction for which there is no context we would choose to resolve it with, we must conclude the statement accurately reflects a categorization of false, and is merely posited, not actual. But it should not surprise us that not everything can be categorized by any one system. Conceptually we are perfectly welcome to and do try. Where the categorization fails, we must choose new categories or systems, what we've been calling contexts, to cope with the phenomena encountered. Making that choice can be seen as change itself. The choosing of a new context in resolving our contradictions removes the degree of freedom held when the contradiction was still actual and the option of which resolution to choose was not exercised. This closely mirrors our experience of time where a moment in time separates two distinct states, one which is already chosen and one that still contains options. We can affect our future states, but not our past. Though this principle applies not only to time, but anywhere we see change.


But how can we choose our way out of the toughest of our limitations? Let's revisit for a moment our statement that reality is born of distinction. Even if one feels this isn't a fair analysis, it seems hard to contest that for all effective purposes this is true. Certainly all things that are distinguishable, which include all in our reality, contain distinctions, and where no distinction has been drawn by us, the relevance of any distinction we might have made disappears, for if a thing has a discernible impact on us, it is distinguished by us. The only question that remains, are all the distinguishable features of our lives of our own making?

The originator of a distinction chooses that distinction. The things born of distinction, the objects distinguished, it may be thought, do not have choice over their form. The question then presents itself, are we the distinctions of another observer? As we mentioned earlier, there are distinctive elements of our lives that certainly seem to admit no choice by ourselves. But if reality, the place where we are, is exactly everything that we are not, there is not room for a second observer, except possibly that mirror image of ourselves, reality itself. If there is only ourselves, can we change that border between ourselves and everything else? Is it arbitrarily stuck where ever it fell? If we have no choice over it, it seems to tell of another observer, but that would tell us of our distinguishing another in our our reality—a creation of our own making choices for us. This is one of those situations that regresses infinitely. We know certain of our own distinctions carry limiting implications of their own, and when we don't recognize the source of one of our own limitations it is exactly as if the limitation were externally imposed. So us or them, it doesn't really matter. Let us here consider impositions as externally imposed, and look for ways of discovering that they in fact are not, thereby freeing ourselves from them. In our limitation is a contradiction that gives us hope of changing it. Contradiction is visible in the question, how can we ever be denied a choice? If a choice is denied, it is not ours to be had, and therefore not a choice. Let's look at how we can see a choice and its denial as an opportunity to overcome limitation.

Let's analyze this by treating this outside source as a real individual. Let's describe the individual as an opponent in a contest with us. Suppose our opponent has imposed on us a limitation that defeats our efforts, setting up an illusory choice that no matter what course we take, comes to the same result. We believe we have options X and Y, and make our plans on the results of choosing X. We expect some advantage, some leverage in our life, to ensue from that choice. We are invested in it. We can end our frustration and see a way of frustrating our opponent, by recognizing that individual is invested in our attempting to acquire X. It's not difficult. It doesn't require great discipline. We ask ourselves, if we do not have some particular option, do we really want it? The only “option” there is Y. We can recognize that our option isn't desirable to us in the first place, thereby changing our desire for it. When we wish for contradictions, it's not that we can't have them, but that they either present contexts that change what we want or change us into someone with new options.

When moving to create our new options, we can take advantage of the fact that ceasing to struggle with an imposition not only frustrates our opponent's dependence on our struggle, but gives us a reverse form of leverage. We can use that leverage not to enslave our opponent to our desires, but to inform our use of the techniques we described in All Is Right to find a solution that detaches us from our pursuer, finding a sustainable solution. In any case, by not accepting the illusion and not making our plans on X we will at least take away our opponent's appetite for deceiving us, just as we've lost our appetite for the illusion.


Why couch our description of overcoming limitation in the language of contradiction? Because contradictions are inevitable. They defeat any systematic approach we may choose to take. The complications involved in the alternate approach of finding strategies with contingencies for every turn still leave open the possibility of the completeness of our approach being contradicted. As we pointed out in Virtuosity, there is freedom gained in the observation that to every advantage possessed by one possible future there corresponds disadvantages. So to make ourselves dependent on particular futures which don't offer a compelling possibility of composure is not so costly to decline as we might fear, just as failing to move on an opportunity for fear of unforeseen consequences denies that we may get what we really wanted, and to the extent we didn't get what we wanted, that there may be as much opportunity anyway.  So to maintain freedom over our choices, accepting the inevitability of contradiction, rather than relying on fragile and easily manipulated plans provides a much more sustainable and composed approach.

We still have not answered the question of whether our limitations are of our own making. We know certainly some are, and there is always a context in which we can view ourselves to be the source of all our distinctions, so whether or not there is another, it would seem sound advice to counter our opponent in a way allowing that individual as much freedom as possible. We may turn out to be freeing ourselves.

tags: freedom  contradiction  distinction  virtuosity  alright  philosophy  choice  strange  logic  proportion