On The Principle of Non-Contradiction as it related to Humanity

March 8, 2009

My thoughts have grafted onto the truth about us much better since I accepted the possibility of contradiction. It is possible, when dealing with humanity, to invalidate the law of contradiction. For a man can both love and hate the same object. A man can be confused and certain about the same face. A young man can murder the woman he loves the most because he loves her too much. It is possible to traverse so far on the wheel of love that one goes down into hatred. And one can hate oneself so much as to birth love of others strictly out of self-contempt. And one can contort love of others into self-love, and bring about an outward apathy after the transition of love-objects. Is anything more surprising about man than the possible contents and configurations of his heart? Is anything less surprising in dealing with him than watching these constituents enacted? No one ought ever be confounded in their interactions with other people.

Does this make every person unique? Yes. More curious, however, is how the uniqueness is such that it does not disallow successful hypotheses. People are at once predictable and unpredictable, trouncing through some categories, defying some tendencies, while nevertheless remaining mired in others.

So, the proposition of trusting another is in the fullest sense a gamble. There are odds that, in theory, could be ascribed to whether the individual before you is, say, lying or not. Yet, even with access to those probabilities--the risk is always that they are an currently an exception. 10:1 the man is honest. He is the sort of man who is honest in these situations. He has been that sort of man for twenty three years. But today, he is exceptional. For his self spills out of the sort, and today his consciousness if floating in the exterior region. There are odds on behavior, and metaodds on the odds being accurate in the given time frame. What a sublime mystery! And we burst through it all the time! Trust and distrust without any consideration (to say nothing of the middling ground of unsureness).

And the frightening position repeats itself in our own interiority. How little do we know ourselves! (What a nebulous concept, housing even more posturing and willful ignorance, even more probability disruption!) Too much and not enough.