Good morning, good afternoon, wherever you are. This episode of 101 things I Wish My Dad Taught Me is bought to you by the fifth universal law, the one and the many and the first universal law, the law of balance. Episode 47. “To solve the paradox you must rise to the metadox.”“To solve the paradox you must rise to the metadox.”
What is a paradox? According to the internet, which is never wrong, hahaha … it is:
a seemingly absurd or contradictory statement or proposition which when investigated may prove to be well founded or true. For example: “the uncertainty principle leads to all sorts of paradoxes, like the particles being in two places at once”
What is a metadox? According to the internet which is never wrong, it is a new gaming mask that has sound stimulation. But I doubt that is what the quote means. Actually metadox is an invented word. Meta (from the Greek, meta, meaning “after” or “beyond”) is a prefix meaning “more comprehensive” or “transcending.” Meta means about the thing itself. It’s seeing the thing from a higher perspective instead of from within the thing, like being self-aware. So, metadox is Walker’s helicopter, discard form, emotional shower.
so let’s explore paradox. There are four paradoxes in the creation of a human being. Without those paradoxes human being cannot judge. Without judgement a human being has no free well. So you can see those four paradoxus are pretty important to being a human being with emotion, confusion uncertainty, self-importance, narcissism, problems, struggles, depression, elation, fantasies, entertainment and mental health problems. Those paradoxes our key to being what we call our ego and life itself. Would you like to know those four paradoxes?
the first paradox is masculine and feminine. We divide ourselves and our society into masculine and feminine based on our appendages. That separation, used and abused since time began, defines so much. It has, until recently, determined how the world was lead. It was, until the past hundred years or so, mostly decided, that people with a dick were more important in leadership than those without. That is definitely one huge paradox. Given that we each have a balance of masculine and feminine qualities within us it also lead to those with a dick thinking that they were in someway half people, denying their feminine side. Although in primitive environments this paradox still exists and is reinforced by some antiquated religious beliefs, at the top and it is being questioned deeply. In fact, defining people by their gender, whether they have a dick or not, has become against the law in some parts of the world. So that might be one paradox that is losing its grip in being a criteria for defining judgement and identity. But there are still three others.
the next separation or paradox is right and wrong. This form of identity is the core construct of the ego. We love to think that we are right. Everybody thinks their watch tells the right time. People would rather coat the world in leather than wear sandals. Opinions have become the new Oxford dictionary, reinforced by the Internet, which, as you know is always right. Always being right is a paradox. It is, according to fundamentalism and religions that have the same binary code, good to be right and bad to be wrong. Therefore, much parenting, much business, much relationship, much social conditioning is built on tribes and communities that complement each other on being right against a photo that is, always wrong. Even communities who have broken through the paradox of gender, have inherited the ambition to be, always right. And this paradox drives much of the world of pharmaceutical and mental health clinics, because there is no possibility to be always right and the tension it causes a person to operate in such an insecure and violent tone, can only be reinforced by being completely medicated. Medicated, alcohol, religion, spirituality, fast food, sugar, drugs, and the Internet. But it is a membership that the majority subscribed to. The paradox of being always right. The opposite is hard to describe.
the next paradox is pleasure versus pain. A human being divide itself with these two criterion. It is a total paradox that we should try to separate these two peers. But it is a piece of software that exists within every human being and without it we would not survive. In Darwinian theory, it is the foundation of evolution. We seek pleasure, we run into pain, we seek more pleasure, we run into pain and the journey continues. Unfortunately for many people the seeking of pleasure can whittle itself down into an hourly or minute by minute appetite for things that don’t necessarily add up to long-term well-being. In fact, on a global survey love, for most people, is the ultimate quest for pleasure. Something that love did not volunteer to become part of but has become the icon of for most people. When Love comes to represent pleasure it is being hijacked not unlike taking cocaine thinking that this is its primary healthy use. The paradox of pleasure over pain has been studied by scientists throughout time and you may see this as the foundation of therapy. The promise of pleasure over pain, in whatever form it is promised in, leads people for the entirety of their life. But on their deathbed they will say, whoops, made a mistake.
I have left is the fourth paradox to last because it is the most spooky one for those who don’t like to think outside the box of the first three. If gender defines a person, and being right all the time is their primary objective, and pleasure is the definition of love and well-being, then this last one is going to be a real hunky-dory bombshell. The fourth paradox is the separation of self and other. Yes, you are you, I am me, and we are entirely disconnected because I am here and you are there. You are doing what you do where ever that is, and I am doing whatever I do where ever that is. Therefore, if you are in the paradox, and I am not, then that’s you and that’s me. The more we subscribe to the first three paradox the more it would be impossible for us to consider the idea that we all come from one source, we go to one source, and the differences between us are entirely fraudulent. I’m not expecting a an Academy award for presenting the idea that self and other is a paradox. This would go against the self obsessive, in titled obsession we have to build our families behind Brickwalls of wealth and strength and intelligence and prove to the neighbours that we are superior, or at least as good as, them. It would fly in the face of wearing the latest Apple Watch. What would happen to our society if Catholics and Jews decided to amalgamate their religious tribes and become one, or Buddhists and Christians decided to form a united religion. What would happen if all the car makers decided to get together and fix price and make one car for the world. Sort of like they tried in East Germany behind the wall. Such adventures to overcome the paradox of self and other have always ended up feeding all the power to a few, and subjugating everybody else to a beige grey world.
in order to inhabit this body you must subscribe to some if not all of these paradox. You must, at some point, on the fact that you have either a dick or not, you must at some point aspire to get it right, you must at some level be interested in pleasure over pain, and you must at some other high-level of thinking separate self and other, otherwise motivations and evolution would stop. But, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, okay, enough but.
every paradox comes with a set of problems. When we become fixated on a paradox we become immersed in what could only be described as a sewage pot. The ground beneath our feet and with in the cells of our body becomes toxic. Challenge escalates in our life and we become addicted to substitutes that can overcome the side-effects of all the four paradox. The irony is that when a paradox is challenged nature is inviting evolution but for most people when a paradox is challenge, they feel the need to strengthen their grip on the paradox. A person who has discovered that they are not always right, will go to a psychologist to justify the fact that they are right. A person who has found that love is not a quest for pleasure, or not just a quest for pleasure, will look for alternatives to sustain the model. And so the world goes round with people operating in the paradoxus, trying to validate themselves, doing everything they can including research on, the always right, Internet, Google has become the new religion. The great part about Google is if you look hard enough it will tell you whatever you want to hear.
if you believe that guns are a good thing, that every person in the world should have one, and shoot anybody that gets in threat for their paradox, look up Google. It will absolutely agree with you. If you believe that mail is more powerful than female, just go look it up and google will agree. And so the world goes around, and around, and around, and around. If this is the functionality you wish to engage in then you are probably in the wrong place reading all about paradox and the mettadox.
so it goes something like this. Every human being on the planet subscribes to the paradoxus. All four of them. Each and every time we have some sort of problem it means it’s time to let go of one. Not let go of it in tightly but let go of the paradox that is governing our experience of an event or situation we are in. And that is called healing, evolution, personal growth and good leadership. So let’s talk a little bit about how we do that.
if we have the situation where two people are having an argument. The solution for most people would be to argue until one per person capitulates. That is most people’s interpretation of resolution of an argument. There are many ways we can negotiate this capitulation, such as demanding an apology, being validated and found correct, or playing the victim and demonstrating how the other persons opinion has diminished us or made us feel less than great. They are the classical naive approaches to resolution of an argument. There are books that reinforce this and of course, the Internet which is always right, validates all of these solutions. Pity loves a party.
even the classical mediation strives to negotiate a peace treaty between two opposing parties with what is called, win-win, strategy. Which usually means both people are not happy but compromised. So let’s ask ourselves is there another way to look at an argument between two people?
- Can both people in an argument be right? Well the answer is categorically yes. They are both right. And wrong. Can both people except that the opposing opinion could also be valid? If we get stuck in the paradox trying to make one side better than the other which is defined as an argument the resolution is only possible we have one person capitulates. But righteousness is at the core of argument, and therefore by capitulating we reinforce the other persons paradox, that they are always right. And so begins the deterioration of a relationship. When being right, and playing games until that is validated, such as looking up the Internet to reinforce the opinion, or making the other person feel bad through guilt or victimhood, we reinforce the status quo and make the beginning of the toxic swamp called family. Family does not have to be a toxic swamp but when being right becomes the dominant objective of one or all of the players, it is. Same with a corporate team. The solution, is to evolve, rise up, above the paradox and find where right and wrong merge.
- can you have pleasure and pain at once. When we seek pleasure we seek to have it in its best form, isolated from any downside of the experience. We might be in a hurry to get to work and make breakfast with a flash in the microwave, a coffee on the run and off we go to work. The pleasure is time saving, a great sugar and caffeine hit, and minimal fuss. But sometime down the track we are visiting the doctor asking about this strange reflux that is taking place in our throat during the day and after having a torch shoved up a bum we find that we have something going on in our digestive system that is not necessarily a pleasure. With this comes the most expensive seminar on earth which is a hospital bed. Our body never lies. So sometimes, by separating pleasure from the pain we are able to experience the ultimate pleasure and somewhere downstream, live to resent, the ultimate pain. I paddled a kayak for years, climbed mountains in Nepal, and had the ultimate pleasure from all of it, followed by three serious back surgeries and seven years of pain. If I immerse myself in the pleasure in isolation to the pain it may create I am operating as a dog or a cat or a crocodile would. My body is just seeking pleasure avoiding pain and that is animal instinct. If we all operated in this zone alone we would, like dogs, sniff each other’s butts and mount each other at Will. But that doesn’t happen because the other paradox, right and wrong, prevent it. So if we rise up above pleasure we will always witness the pain that it contains right there in then and that makes us, wise. Until the next time. The idea that we will ever transcend this or any paradox is ridiculous, what we need to do is rise and continually search for the balance.
- can you be both masculine and feminine in spite of the appendages you may witness? In the classic medical definition these things are up for negotiation however, masculine in the paradox represents destruction and feminine in the paradox represents creation. You cannot create without destroying and you cannot destroy without creating. If you build a building you destroy a rainforest or a a resource. There is no choice. If you destroy a rainforest you create the essential ingredients for nature to create an alternative form of oxygen producing balance in the world. As an example the reduction of rainforests has paralleled the introduction of plants in homes and satellite gardens in cities. Now we don’t always like what we see. So, the creation destruction model also challenges the right and wrong model which also challenges the pleasure of pain model when it comes to changing the form of what we’ve got into what we want. That is the paradox. But we do not have to be angry, emotive, violent on ourselves or others. We can rise if we choose above the naive paradox and witness the merging of the masculine and feminine in everything, especially ourselves.
- The last one is a doozy. Can you be self and other at the same time? Well the first answer everybody would give to that if you took a google camera out onto the street and put it on the Internet would be no, and of course that would be right, because it’s on the Internet. However, with a little bit of thinking about thinking, which most people don’t do, most people just think that they think, we will find that every human being has every human trait. That what we judge in others we judge in ourselves. So it might just come to be that the separation between ourselves and others is a fiction. If every human has every trade then it seems to me to be impossible to be different, only different in the way we express that difference. This drives to the very core of our consciousness. It would appear that every time we witness a difference between a self and another person we have an opportunity to either promote that difference and reinforce the paradox or rise up and evolve. It’s simple, but most people don’t see it that way. They’d rather argue they are right and we are wrong, that they are female and we are male, all that we are disrupting their pleasure and therefore an unwelcome presence in their paradise.
So it might start to become obvious that the paradox, all four of these paradox, are the source of all human suffering, but there is no way out of it while we are in a body, but there is a solution to every single discomfort we have, different to what the majority would claim to be, which the Internet will agree with, best practice. Jumping in the Walker copter and rising up above whatever is going on will eventually reveal that the paradox is a myth, and every time it triggers us we might be choosing between operating as a primate or as an evolved, inspired, spiritual, healthy, loving, kind, generous, true natured, human being.
That’s the end of today’s Episode.
With Spirit
Chris