Consider how nature seems to work, as opposed to how we tend to think. Opposites abound in our minds: republican vs. democrats, conservatives vs. liberals, men vs. women, left vs. right, good vs. evil.
But how often in nature do true opposites occur?
We think of “hot” versus “cold.” Heat, of course, is generated in any number of ways as energy released from its source(s). It is produced as, shall we say, a generated force. Cold, on the other hand, is not. In reality, cold is nothing at all but the absence of heat. We use the metric of temperature to gauge just how much heat is present in a given place, but at no point along the scale is cold articulated. Cold is merely a perception of the absence of heat, the single result of some generating source.
In the same fashion, there is no generative force that “produces” darkness. Light, of course, is a product derived as some generated force from various sources of production, and darkness merely a lingual element describing an absence of light. There are countless other examples of human conception perceiving the absence of some generative force as a force unto itself. It appears that that is not how nature works.
When considering the conduct of people in a civil society or, for the matter the daily conduct of life, might not adopting a mindset of uni-directionalism serve some purpose? With any circumstance at hand, understanding that there is a single source that is “right,” with our task being to consider a solution that falls some distance relative to that sole source, provides a quite different point of view. The alternative, typical view is to come to some compromise between two competing forces. Whereas, uni-directional acuity asks the question “how far we stand from the ‘right’ are we willing to accept?”
This, it seems to me, is a typically conservative perspective. Conservatives envision reality and its evolution as it is and could be, as opposed to the pompous blathering of liberals who invent history and reality while intending for a future, rather than creating a future as a byproduct of what actually is. Understanding that humans are imperfect, conservatives consider the circumstances in which they find themselves and evaluate how far they are willing to move away from that single source of good and right.
Morality, for example, is one such sole, generating source of what is right. As liberal-radical hubris would view reality as a line between two generative forces, i.e. right and wrong, they construct a morality relative to that which is wrong, since that which is right is for them perpetually not understood nor accepted (and certainly not liked). Thus their moral relativism that offers license to behave badly under a false rubric. Again, nature doesn’t possess diametrically opposing forces, why then should we consider our human perception any differently?
This uni-directional conception of thought and belief does present, however, a problem for the devoutly religious. Christianity, for example, places evil in direct, albeit weaker, opposition to goodness. Even as God actively participates in the lives of people, so too does Satan. Uni-directionalism would have us understand God as the sole source of complete and utter goodness, and that instead of being an opposing force, Satan is the complete and utter absence of goodness. Satan, then, is not a force generating evil in sheer opposition to the force that is God. A dilemma, to be sure – one I have not yet vetted to a satisfactory extent.
The point of this essay is to introduce and begin exploring uni-directionalism. It is one thing to ponder such subjects, and another thing entirely to write it down and read it back to oneself. It raises more questions than it resolves, particularly in the arena of religion. So this is hardly a definitive thesis, but simply an introductory topic for consideration.
Ultimately, I think, this is a question of freewill. Where opposing forces pull the human mind, heart, and spirit in either of two directions, uni-directionalism removes circumstances as our life’s dictators and places the onus of choice on each of us. As we consider what we do and how we do it, we know there is one force generated toward which we choose to pursue. The question becomes, then, how far from the right are we willing to stray?
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