The deeper that sorrow carves onto your being, the more joy you can contain. Is not the cup that holds your wine the very cup that was burned in the potter's oven?-- Khalil Gibran
"If we want have an utopia, we have to have a dystopia first". This thought occurred to me in passing although I didn't pursue it further. To my knowledge, this kind of notion doesn't have a name, so let's call it dualism paradox for convenience.
It is a paradox because the ideas are contradictory; and it is dualism (not Plato's dualism) because, well, it involves binary oppositions. Enough with the difficult words. I think Jason Mraz sings it quite succinctly:
It takes some good to make it hurt
It takes some bad for satisfaction
It takes a night to make it dawn
And it takes a day to make you yawn, brother
And it takes some old to make you young
It takes some cold to know the sun
It takes the one to have the other
And it takes no time to fall in love
But it takes you years to know what love is
And it takes some fears before I trust
It takes those tears to make it rust
It takes the rust to have it polished
Ah la la la la la life is wonderful
Ah la la la la la life goes full circle
Ah la la la la la life is wonderful
Ah la la la la
It takes some silence to make sound
And it takes a loss before you found it
And it takes a road to go nowhere
It takes a toll to show you care
It takes a hole to see a mountain
-- Jason Mraz, Life is Wonderful (abridged)
I think not many people understand this blatant thing: it takes pain to gain; it takes hardship to know happiness; and so forth. This is what I mean by "there is no utopia without dystopia". You have to know what are lacking, what are corrupt, what needs to be rectified, to build a utopia -- dystopia is the means to the utopian end.
Of course, picking from the vast expanse on the meaning of love, tough love is a good example. This is the kind of love that is strict and disciplined, which may not appear as loving, but is ultimately for the good of the person being loved.
It is really no wonder that Pandora found Hope at the bottom of the jar. It takes all those evils to have hope, doesn't it?
Update: In retrospect, antonymic paradox sounds more awesome.
Update: In retrospect, antonymic paradox sounds more awesome.
3 comments:
--rexy--
there are no heroes without villians! This Dualism Paradox as you coin it! I have been using the concept for quite sometimes=) Maybe should publish a book or sth so that you can reserve the term=)
Totally agree with this one... it is illogical to think otherwise anyway...
@rex: Ah I'm sure there's a name for it but since it is one of life's philosophies that one often needs to refer to, at least someone must give it a fancy name =)
@ron: true, but the point is not about being logical or not logical.
It's like something that people always know in the back of their mind or perhaps their subconscious but has no form; it is nebulous. Someone has to spell it out for them, to give that shapeless mess a definite form. Which is what I'm doing.
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