Contradictions are sign of authenticity.*

It was only yesterday when one of my senior was giving a lecture on respecting private life, and a moment later she posted personal photos to FB. Another very close colleague of mine was giving sermon against religious belief but when she was caught going to Dakhineshwar Kali temple for the well being of her children, she was defending her belief system. Well, I do not mind having these contradictory ways of life, since I too have. I was surprised to know a relative of mine making rude comments behind my backs, but that does not stop me doing the same to that relative. Well, none of the incident was unnatural but that put me in the severe vortex of thought.

I wonder how many contradictory thoughts one has in a day? How many times one’s thought confronts one’s actions? How often our feelings oppose our principles and beliefs? Though it is easier to observe such inconsistencies in others but one fails to take notice of one’s contradictions. The irony of the presence of contradiction is ingrained in the very nature of human mind—the mêlée between ‘what is’ and ‘what ought to be’.

I suppose the dual character of human nature is the rhythm of life. Is it not true that the more one learns, one realizes how little one knows, the more connected one feels the more alienated one is, the more one is close, the more one feels away. Do anyone remember the Upanishdic lines: तद्दूरे तदन्तिके [He, (Brahman) is so far yet so near.]

Humans have the unique ability to both harm and heal. We can love, and we can hate. We can submit, and we can refuse. In the process of sifting through our own contradictions, we learn how our inconsistent choices affect our behaviour. But that is what we are made of.

How often I identify myself with the contradictory characters of Narendra Kohli’s short stories! But is it not true that out of such chaos, we detect that we are truly “neither devils nor divines.” We each have a Jekyll in us, and we all have a Hyde, and the wrangle between the two makes us both of them. We think of theft as a crime, but that does not make us hesitate from lifting music or movies unlawfully. We think killing is a terrible thing, but that does not stop us from stepping on the next spider or cockroach we see. Look at the motherly instinct!! When she is most fearful about her child, she becomes the most powerful woman standing against all odds for her children. Do our politicians not protect their loved ones; coddle their children when they say that they prioritize honesty.

The compliance with this double sword seems impossible …..Wait…My friends!! ..…Beneath lies the grains of wisdom. A person might argue for the freedom of individual expression in the field of arts but want hateful speech to be regulated. A core moral principle that one holds, can cause feelings of anger if other people violate it, but when one contemplates violating it one feels guilt and shame. What a wonderful ability one has to discover and accept one’s contradictions.

However, the question remains: whether one should be praised for the ends where one’s means were detestable? Should we overlook one’s flaws and praise one’s successes? These sorts of conundrums in life are nearly too difficult to determine because they aren’t math problems with defined solutions. It is true that sometimes people like Hitler, probably at some point in life did something seemingly nice like cuddling a baby. Or, people like ……Is there anyone who lives according to the Stoic principle of Plutarch, in ‘perfect agreement between the maxims of men and their conduct’? No!! there is no such perfect agreement !! One argues that what characterizes a critical thinker is the ability ‘to point a finger at contradictions’, but critical thinkers don’t escape contradiction either. Here comes the aesthetic of the contradictions in life. Perhaps art, literature, science or philosophy would not be possible without intrapersonal contradictions and the desire to resolve them. It’s down this rabbit hole of thought where one explores why one is not as good as one likes to be.

Humans live peacefully with contradictions but when contradictory statements, actions or emotions jump out of their contextual box, one finds justifications to soothe cognitive conflict. Once I was stuck in paradoxical injunctions too, while asking my student to ‘be spontaneous in her writing!’ and she starts writing as if she is going for a free association session in counselling. I banged my head in stupidity.

What about the classical treatment of the law of non-contradiction which states that it is impossible for an object to be in two places at the same time, and that nothing can be simultaneously true and false at the same time? A dog cannot be both black and white at the same time yet…. if it is neither black nor white!!

Given Aristotle's observation some quantum mechanics has brought such challenges once more into play and deny law of non-contradiction, affirm that it is indeed possible for the same thing ‘to be and not to be’ at the same time and in the same respect. Thus, we have Schrödinger's celebrated imaginary cat, placed inside a sealed box along with radioactive material and a vial of poison gas that will be released if and only if that material decays. Given quantum uncertainty, an atom potentially inhabits both states, seeming to render the cat both alive and dead. It is argued that the mere potential for an entity to be in either of two mutually inconsistent states does not in itself violate the law of non-contradiction. In one New Yorker cartoon a veterinarian comes into the waiting room, places a comforting arm on the worried man’s shoulder, and breaks the news: “About your cat, Mr. Schrödinger—I have good news and bad news.” (It is both dead and alive)

The tetralemma of Buddhist logic overthrows all bounds of rational arguments. It is discussed within the context of slits and surplus which is known as the fourfold negation (catuṣkoṭi). Nāgārjuna states:

Everything is real.

Everything is not real.

Everything is both real and not real.

Everything is neither real nor not real.

In the Western tradition, the true contradictions is typically—although not exclusively—motivated on the basis of such classic logical paradoxes as “This sentence is not true” and its analogues; such a statement is evidently true if and only if it is not true —The Liar’s paradoxes. One begins: either God is omnipotent or God is not omnipotent. With omnipotence, He can do anything, and in particular He can create a stone, that is so heavy even He cannot lift it. His omnipotence is under question!!

In Marxist theory, too, contradictories do not simply cancel out but are dynamically resolved at a higher level in a way that both preserves and supersedes the contradiction, motivating the historical dialectic. Even in Psychology, on the primary level “‘No’’ seems not to exist, as far as dreams are concerned. Anything in a dream can mean its contrary. When the analysand insists of a dream character “It's not my mother”, the analyst knowingly translates, “So it is his mother!”

A relatively new means for expressing ambivalence in colloquial U.S. and Australian English is the “Yeah no” (or, less frequently, “No yeah”) response.

Some of the examples of semantic paradoxes are:

1) If I could drop dead right now, I would be the happiest man alive!

2) If you break your legs, don’t come running to me.

3) I never put on a pair of shoes until I’ve worn them five years.

4) Click your start button to shut the computer down.

Semantic contradiction includes cruel kindness, living death, and true lies, gentle torture, working vacation, the sound of silence etc.

Oxymoron is a self-contradicting word or group of words (as in Shakespeare’s line from Romeo and Juliet, where we ascend from the former’s record of battling binaries to the latter’s ardent adieu on her balcony:

Why, then, O brawling love! O loving hate!

O anything, of nothing first create!

O heavy lightness! Serious vanity!

Misshapen chaos of well-seeming forms!

Feather of lead, bright smoke, cold fire, sick health!

…Good night, good night. Parting is such sweet sorrow

That I should say good night till it be morrow.

—Romeo and Juliet, II.ii

Like Rashomon effect in psychological test, Buddha’s story of ‘गतो’स्तं अर्कः’ (i.e. the sun has set) attributes contradictory interpretations of an event by the disciples —one going for study, other for evening prayer, another for stealing and the fourth one going to prostitute house —make them so human and more compelling that gives greater authenticity to the fact that something did happen.

What a wonder !! We need constraints to unlock creativity, yet we rebel against those same constraints, we laud the value of following rules, yet nearly every major success comes from breaking/bending/ignoring the rules, we expect logic and reason to impact the decisions of others when we know that our own decisions are emotional.

In formal logic, a contradiction is the signal of defeat, but in the evolution of real knowledge it marks the first step of progress. One does not reconcile the poles, one just recognize them. That ‘the sun will not rise tomorrow’ is no less intelligible a proposition, and implies no more contradiction, than the affirmation, that it will rise. One needs to learn how to transcend binary logic and plays with both sides of the spectrum. Hegel was right when he said that we learn from history that man can never learn anything from history.

Nature is a great optimizer, a ‘self-correcting’ system. This oscillating boom-and-bust population cycle is the ‘natural order’. In the research to identify how and where nature solves contradictions …As often told in the clichéd joke involving two men being chased by a tiger, the problem is not about whether humans can run faster than tigers, but whether one human can run faster than another. In other words, we only have to be slightly better than our immediate competitors in order to be the one to survive to live another day. Ultimately, of course, someone invents a shotgun to shoot the tiger, thus solving a contradiction and forever changing the game in favour of the human. At this point in time, the tiger has not been successful in countering the bullet threat. ….’ In the case of the tiger versus-human story, if humans were the only prey of tigers and the tigers got really good at killing humans then the number of tigers would grow while the number of humans would shrink. Ultimately then the number of humans would be insufficient to feed all the tigers and so some parts of the tiger population would starve and the number of tigers would ‘naturally’ drop. These balances are everywhere in nature.

What an appropriate hymn:

I fear that I am a walking contradiction.

Completely devoid of purpose, of meaning

But so hopelessly in love with the beauty of it all….

Tomorrow I shall yell to the world,

scour the depths of my mind,

purge myself of prior thoughts,

and contradict myself through words.

* Paulo Coelho de Souza

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