The problem with binaries

Binaries aren’t all bad. The tao is a representation of both a binary and a spectrum, rolled into one. Yin and Yang are opposites, yet they are also bleeding into—and contain—each other. If you cut cross-sections of the symbol, you create a spectrum moving from more yin, less yang toward more yang, less yin. Importantly, the symbol represents both how we organize the world AND how that organization always unravels. Shelley’s “Destroyer and Preserver” idea here. Derrida focused on the problem of unraveling, insisting that binary pairs in language represent the self-referential nature of concept/language. He was wrong. Binarism is built into the human organism. In fact it is the basic structure of biological organization. Male and Female; left brain and right brain; lateral symmetry of the body. Lakoff and Johnson did not mention the presence of biology in metaphor-making, but it is there. You might say that the IDEA of biology, the PATTERN, the STRUCTURE that maintains the integrity of matter in organisms, is built on binaries. And since the matter that sustains us is “recycled,” the IDEA that holds it in a PATTERN is critical to life and homeostasis.

Derrida was, as I have previously claimed, a closet positivist. He wanted absolutes of meaning, that could be attached to objects and concepts. What he found and exploited for his own ends were objects and concepts that were “slippery” since they were defined by their relationships to each other rather than by some absolute referential, individual meaning. Of course he found that! The insight is old in the East. Everything is defined by relationship. The meaning of everything depends on context. The reality of things is not the matter in them, but the “forms” of their relationships—both internal and external. This was Plato’s insight, which has been called “Idealism.” But the only way we can understand and enter relationship with the world is sensory engagement, and the material and ideational are always conjoined. So it is silly to say (and eastern religion is wrong here too) that we must “ignore” the sensual world and focus on the “reality” that lies behind, beyond, above it.

Pattern and Matter are always integrated, and Matter carries Meaning as Meaning shapes and influences Matter. Representation, mapping, modeling à physical structure, behavior, actionà further representation, mapping, modeling. The structure of creatura is built on this cycle. Genetic codes “map” the body, which develops according to those maps. Neuronal “mappings” create images in the mind based on perceptual engagement with the world. Images in the mind are given names, “mapped” once again within systems of language and meaning. All the mappings, all the coding systems, are subject to re-vision and alteration. Does chaos result? Not at all. As with language itself, the system is dynamic, changing, and yet remarkably stable. It is miraculously adaptive. We can indeed reshape our destiny.

At a basic level, metaphor and narrative are forms of “mapping the world.” We use stories and metaphorical figures of speech to organize our experience and to make it meaningful and manageable. Metaphor and narrative are much more effective than expository prose at capturing the complex, relationship-centered aspect of reality. Yet they too can limit us. Oversimplification is one of our key shortcomings. For instance, Darwin’s selection of competition (struggle for survival, survival of the fittest, and so on) as the central metaphor for describing and analyzing ecosystems. Poetry reminds us that no one set of metaphors can describe anything. Seeing things and patterns anew is refreshing and vital to our effort to understand a complex world. Narratives also get reified, turned into “the word of God” instead of stories ABOUT meaning. We seek to make facts of our interpretations and to make objects of our facts. We try to stabilize the world, when in fact we bore ourselves to death when it is too stable.

Don Juan claims that the Nagual and the Tonal are a true pair—a binary that is real rather than constructed to point at what is real. That which is known and that which is unknown; that which has been experienced and described and that which has not yet been experienced and described. The key is to be able to experience the Nagual—to get outside of our current mappings, to recognize new possibilities and meanings, to “think outside the box” (or more accurately, to perceive outside the box). Language is indeed a prison-house if we let it be one. But beyond language is sensory experience itself. Attention and focus, coupled with internal silence, can open surprising doors. That’s why so many people have meditated and practiced mind-changing disciplines over the ages. But perhaps there are also physical “boxes” that we cannot simply jump out of. The structure of our minds is what it is. We cannot see ultraviolet radiation. We cannot see light particles. We cannot feel the barrage of gamma rays hitting us moment by moment. Or can we? We have seen them in our minds, and imagined them into being. Are they “real” or “imagined”?