Paradoxes

Our first resort is to analyze problems in terms of some pair of opposites: whether it is or isn’t, what is true and what is false. This is called logical thinking. Sufficiently exhaustively tracing such a path, however, will inevitably lead to what they sometimes call a “paradox”—something that cannot be true and also cannot be false. We can disprove what we believe to be true, but we can also disprove its negation.

It is sad to be trapped in such a mode of experience. I know. It is associated with the number two, because there are two poles, and we try to find a place in the middle—the golden mean. Adding an element, we get three, which is the number of Plato’s dialectic

Sometimes I feel like this: It feels claustrophobic, like being trapped. The sense of getting caught on thoughts, like they’re made of Velcro. Each thought is also its own opposite and nothing makes sense. Neither can it be resolved into a single place somewhere between the two poles, nor does it yet resolve on its own into a clearer third thing. I see it too clearly to be able to say, “yes” or “no” for really neither is quite right or quite wrong—yet too dimly to be able to say what it is without the use of words.

The importance of paradoxes in understanding reality is discussed throughout A Philosophy of Madness.