‘Yin and Yang’ is a Chinese philosophy that describes "how opposite or contrary forces are actually complementary, interconnected and interdependent in the natural world."
This comes to mean that the opposites need each other to exist.
How could you know how good is a God if there is not an Evil to compare?
Good and Bad are complementary, and none of them can exist without the other. There is no God without Evil or Night without Day.
I've always liked this kind of philosophies...
For instance: Think about a tree. You picture it as an independent 'object' and that’s what it is, somehow. But if you really think about it, you'll see that it doesn't have any independent existence: The rain, falling over its leaves and helping it to keep fed; the wind stirring the branches and spreading its seeds, the soil standing it up and feeding it, the air/oxygen that produces and 'breathes', the seasons, the weather, the sun, the moonlight... Everything is part of the tree. The whole universe helps to make the tree what it is and you can't isolate it from that... That's why we can say that things are empty and meaningless by themselves: because nothing has an independent existence. That's why there is not right without wrong, black without white and so on.
Everything is like this. A mirage, a dream, an illusion... A landscape covered by the white snow's brightness, making everything look nice and beautiful... But beneath that white blanket there is the mud being part of the scene too, even though our willful blindness is helping us to ignore the ugly for not to ‘disturb’ our nice view. But is there. The mud is there and is part of what we consider ‘beautiful’ and ‘good’. You can’t isolate it.
At this stage, I guess we all know that we don't need to be blind to feel the darkness, just like we don't need to have eyes to see that nothing is how it seems.
We are part of a huge Whole.
What we ARE NOT is also helping us to be how WE ARE, and that’s part of us too.
Because the Nothingness is part of the Being.
Thanks for reading.
*cheese dance!*
...and this is how, with an animated gif, I lose now all the credibility right after my serious
philosophical reflection... sigh. I couldn’t help it :/
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Sorry Eva, I haven't been able to add the food-related words!
Actually, I’ve added most of the words in a very clumsy way (just using them all together)
I’m not very skillful when I’ve to follow some rules :(
Comments
I think this our main point of disagreement: You need to believe the circle was drawn by 'someone' and I just think about the circle itself as a whole.
OKay, now let's say for a moment there is a 'God' or 'Superior Being' who made that circle. Now you can keep going further, you can keep asking your question about a 'starting point': the 'starting point' of the circle is a 'God' who made it. Okay so now: What is the 'starting point of God'?? How showed up 'God'?? Who 'made it'?? How that God 'comes to existece'??
Now it happens that your question is infinite too! :) We can always keep asking what is the 'starting point' of everything... and maybe there is none and everything is just like an infinite loop :)
For some reason that I can't get to understand, people who believe in God can't conceive that the Universe is infinite and it wasn't created by anyone. However, is very easy for you to believe that God is infinite and it wasn't created by anyone... And this is very 'funny' for me, because I find more easy, likely and credible the first option :)
Zahra, nice to see you here again with more question! :D
I'm glad to discuss about it even if, as I said in my previous comment, all these concepts are too abstract and many things are very hard to explain or understand. I don't understand myself lot of things! :D
Okay, the lines you've emphasized of my blog are those related with religion and as I said in my previous reply, I probably shouldn't have used religious concepts as 'God' and 'Evil' because the message can be mixed and confused.
You said: "Things depend on one another to survive". Yes, that's exactly what I say in my metaphor of the tree: The tree is what it is because it depends on everything around it. The tree is not an independent 'object', but a part of a whole.
Then you also say: "There must be a starting point". Well... can you tell me what is the starting point of a circle? :)
It's interesting that you mention the circle yourself but you say it's 'confusing'. Actually, the circle has been always a symbol of the absolute and the perfection. The Earth and the Sky. It's everything but 'confusing'! That's how I believe is the Universe... Like a circle without beginning or end (infinite) where everything is interconnected :)
Zahra! Sorry, I didn't notice your comments before, it's very nice to see you here and I'm glad that you're asking so many questions! :D
I think your questions are not as 'abstract' as what I wrote on my blog and they are related with some concepts of your religion... I'm gonna try to reply the best I can, taking in mind that i'm not any philosopher myself!
Okay first off, you ask how can we know what is 'good' and what is 'bad' and not to 'mix it'... Well, what is 'right/good' or 'bad/wrong' depends on which moral codes are you using to measure ("What is 'good' for the spider, is 'bad' for the fly") We basically decide what is 'good' or 'bad' for us, but that's not the question in my blog; what I try to set out is that you can't know what is 'positive' if there is not a 'negative' and viceversa. You can establish later that 'positive' is gonna be 'good' and 'negative' is gonna be 'bad' and make a rule to follow that statement. But the thing is that you need two opposites to make a distinction; otherwise there is nothing to distinguish.
Your second question is also complicated to explain because is very related with the belief that there has to be something/someone who 'creates' everything. Here I could reply talkin' about science, but that's not the topic and neither is part of the topic to talk about a 'creator'.
You said: "OK, suppose that there existed nothing"... if you can say that there is a 'nothing', then it's because there is a 'something'. Again, you can't be aware of the first one if there is not an opposite. Imagine you're living in a 2D world and you see crossing the sky a 3D ball. Then I ask you to explain how was that 3D ball. The only way your 2D experience can explain how is the 3D ball is saying that it was a circle very small that was becoming gradually big and then small again... You just can understand the 3D ball as a 2D object because you don't have any other references. In this way, you can't even know/understand what is 'nothing' if there is not the reference of the 'everything' and viceversa. One is impossible to understand without the other.
But anyway, all these are very abstract concepts and probably I shouldn't have used religious concepts as 'God' and 'Evil' because the message can be mixed and confused, as I can see for your comments. But I appreciate all your questions! :)
I wish I could know more about philosophy to explain myself better! Sorry if I didn't make myself clear...
Thanks for reading!
I'm glad you liked RK, thanks for reading!
Hello saba!
Well that's an interesting question, indeed! :)
I'm totally for the things 'in between' too! haha... I don't really know too much so maybe we should ask to a real philosopher or something. But I guess the 'neutral' things you say are just in between of the extremes. I think many times that's the more interesting; like in a book or movie, where it's not so important what's going on at the begining of the story or at the end, but in between.
Anyway, whatever it is, thanks for coming up with a question to think about, and for your comment :)
Hello dear Mary,
Your blog made me to think about contrasting words and yin-yang philosophy more, I thought if there is just opposite or contrary such as, Black White, Day Night, Negative Positive, Male Female......then where is neutral in this philosophy?!!! Where is Grey, Midnight, Zero, Nonbinary.....
You are very good at writing, thank you very much for your thought-provoking blog :)
Mohammad dear, I think you should get when some statements are more symbolic than literal. Since you're a religious guy who knows the Quran (which is full of symbolisms) I guess you should know the difference pretty well.
You should have seen that my blog is not a scientific research, but my personal reflections, opinions and thougths that are based on some ideas of eastern philosophies such as Buddhism. These philosophies are a much more complex thing but I've just took an idea which I've simplified and modified taking in mind Eva's challege.
I added the comparison mud/snow because of the challenge, as you pointed out very well but, again, it's just mere symbolism too. I'll put a very simple example: Imagine we have to write about 'Love'. I'm sure most of us would write sentences like: "Love is Everything!"... And then you come and comment something like: "Oh you said something wrong and illogical there, because objectively, 'love' is just a chemical reaction and you can't compare Love with Everything... you can't compare Love with Mars!"... Can you see there how stupid and out-of-place would be that comment?
But let's talk about the Nothingness and the Being, as the philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre had said. One can be the lack of the other but that doesn't mean that they can't be also part of each other.
Let's let aside the thing about God/Evil and other fairy tales (but knowing the human being psychology, my personal opinion is that if there were no Evil nobody would give a shit about a God; and you can't know what is 'good' if there is not a 'bad')
Now take an empty box. If you look at it, you can say that the empty part of the box is nothing. But if there is not that empty space, what would be the box then? Then it wouldn't be a box but just a cube shape. So the box needs the emptiness to BE a box.
Another example, and this time let's think bigger: The Universe. The Universe is 'made' of 2 main 'things': 1) Matter 2) Space. In a simple way, we can say that the Matter are the 'things' and the Space the 'no-things'. The Space is the 'container' of the Matter. Without Space (no-things)... where would we place the Matter (things)? The 'Things' NEED the 'NO Things' to BE. You can say the 'no-things' are the lack of 'things'. Yeah ok. But still the 'things' NEED the 'no-things' and they are part of each other. At least, this is how I see it, and I don't think it's so illogical.
But anyway, even if you think that my blog is not correct, I'm happy with it since I can see by other members' comments that my reflection made sense for them and they got my point pretty well.
Don't get me wrong, I really appreciate your point of view and your interest for the pragmatism and logic. But I suggest you not to waste your precious time analyzing my simple blogs here. You better open your copy of The Holy Quran and try to find the logic there. I bet that would be much more interesting and enriching.
setareh, thanks for your dropping by and for your nice words. I really appreciate it! :)
LUCI haha okay! Let's fight! :D
Hello dear Mary, thanks for sharing this blog.
As a matter of fact, from my point of view, you have said something wrong in your blog which made you get incorrect result. As you know, from the logic science, you cannot make analogy between all things (all beings). The two elements (beings) which you wanna compare them together, must have a kinda parallelism with each other. As an example, how you can compare the headache with the Mars ! ,,, in fact it was just an example and I don't want to say that your comparisons were like this.
Perhaps you say: "OK, who has said that I compared these mentioned words together ? "
See, as you know, when you put the logical statements such as: "AND (subscription)", "OR(union)", and "not (antonym, contrary)" between two elements, they must be in parallel with each other and when you say object A is the contrary (NOT of) of object B; you have made an analogy between them. Actually the parallelism between the pair-word: 'snow and mud' is completely different with the pair-words: 'right and wrong', 'to be vision and to be blind', and 'brightness and darkness'. Also the comparison between the God and Satan (Evil) is essentially wrong!
But why ? ,,, See, in the matter of 'right and wrong', 'goodness and badness', 'darkness and brightness', and 'blind and vision', these pair words are contrary because one of them is lack of the other one. For instance the lack of brightness is darkness, or the lack of right causes wrong, or the lack of vision is blind and so forth. Which means the nature of these elements are in contrary. I show you in following image:
But in comparison between 'mud and snow', you cannot say the nature of snow and mud are contrary. or in the other word, "when there is no snow so it is mud !" ,,, or "when there is no white, so it is black" (perhaps it is red or yellow). Anyway I wanted to say that "snow and mud" naturally are NOT contrary BUT the color of snow and mud are different.
I don't deny that you had to use those words because of challenge, but the problem is that you have gotten a wrong result from your comparisons. See, the darkness is NOT part ofbrightness, but the darkness is the LACK of brightness, or the wrong is NOT part of right, but it is the lack of right. In fact you, by using incorrect sentences (about the contrary elements) and generalizing it to the whole, have gotten a wrong result.
But about you comparison between God and Satan (Evil), See, the Satan is a creature and it is not in parallel with the creator to be compared. As an example can you compare yourself with your painting ! (Now please don't ask me that "the God has created Evil ! , why and how ? " because it has its story and here is not proper place to state that). So the comparison between God and Evil is essentially wrong.
No being is independent except God, the one who is self-dependent (Substantive). So others are dependent. This sentence has also a problem. the problem is that I compared God with the being. Because the God is not being, but he is the creator of being. But unfortunately I didn't find a proper word to mention that.
Anyway, it was my comment on this blog and finally I wanna say that "the Nothingness is NOT part of the Being". But "The Nothingness is the lack of the Being". Again as you see in the following figure, the set of A is the contrary (NOT of) the set of A\, but you can not say A is a subset of (a part of) A\ or vice versa.
Thanks for your logical-philosophical blog, Cheers!
LUCI!! Again, thank you so much!!
But honestly, I think that at the moment, your blog about Eva's challenge is the best! ^_^
Anyway, I don't mind if you keep telling me that you like my blog here or in whatever other social site hahaha :D
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