Quantum Drummer

As we have seen several times previously, the relationship between opposites presents a high level of complexity. Analyzing the dynamics of opposites show this to be one of the most complex and impactful behaviors found in human affairs and human life in general.

As mentioned previously, we humans have always divided the world and people’s behaviors in opposites, a condition that appears to be originated by the way that our brains are divided in two hemispheres, and particularly by being under the dominant influence of the left hemisphere, humans have a tendency to pay more attention to individual interests than collaboration, and to favor divisive behaviors over focusing on the whole.

In previous chapters, we have seen several different possibilities for the relationship between opposites. We have seen sometimes the importance of the “union” of the opposites, and in other occasions we have seen the “tension” between the opposites as being a key condition for creativity and growth. While it is clear that the relationship between opposites is an important condition of the human Psyche and all of human behaviors, we need to analyze in more detail the relationship, and understand the opportunities and conflicts that this relationship generates.

The Problem with Polarization

In order to analyze the relationship of opposites, we can start from the root of individual and cultural mental models. By looking at the behaviors of the cultures that have dominated the world in the past few hundred years, mainly the Western cultures with origins in Europe, we have seen the domination of the brain’s left-hemisphere influences, as described in detail by Iain McGilchrist in his book: The Master and its Emissary: The Divided Brain and the Making of the Western World (2010). The left-hemisphere domination has developed a paradigm or mental model in humans that favors individuality, fragmentation, competition and minimizes the importance of collaboration, integration, and holistic solutions to issues. As we have observed, this old paradigm has given us much growth in technology and economic development, but also has generated large existential problems for humanity.

The source of many of the negative effects of performing under a left-brain thought structure starts with our tendency to polarize the world on a regular basis. The dominant mental model in Western culture makes us behave this way in an automatic and almost unconscious way. Whatever situation we find on a daily basis, when interacting with other individuals, results in some level of “judging” or “labelling,” of everything and everyone according to our mental framework.

To make sense of the world and give it some sense of order, we use a dualistic lens that categorizes our realities under an either ~ or dichotomy. Many times, we “force” this categorization such that we fit everything and everyone in the order that we believe to be true for our world reality. While our intentions can have a positive reason and logic to us, if we realize that our world reality is biased and subjective, we can see why this behavior may result in conflict when interacting with others.

As an example we can observe our behaviors when we meet a new person. Normally when we first meet somebody, we immediately start attaching labels based on the person looks, and when we ask questions that are intended to get to know the person better, some of these questions will have certain level of judging and labelling that, while intending to accept engagement with the person or not, will also result in us fitting the person to a set of our own “polarizing rules” that may or may not be accurate. When judging the person, we generalize the information to “force fit” the person in our mental framework. Depending on our paradigm, the first thing we do is to identify the person as “one of us” or “one of the other” which is the first polarization we make, (and could be the most negative). This can be the source of prejudice and even racist judgments whether we are conscious of it or not. If the person is of different skin color we might assume different levels of economic condition, education, values, and even we might bring up some automatic protection shields. If we identify the person as “one of us” we might be open to continue the engagement, and if we identify the person as “one of the other” we might tend to avoid engagement.

We automatically tend to polarize in both cases either by automatically accepting the person that is “one of us” or automatically tend to make some space between us and the person that is “one of the other.”

Another example occurs when we are interacting with a person and they mention some issue that is conflicting with our mental framework. If I am an entrepreneur and value competition, and another entrepreneur mentions the value of collaboration, it is quite possible for me to label the other entrepreneur as less competitive or even as less successful, just because in the competition ~ collaboration dichotomy the perception is that collaborative means less competitive and vice-versa, while in reality we could be both competitive and collaborative, and being both does not mean being less of either.

In the competitive world of capitalism, saying that the goal is to achieve a win-win, sometimes is translated to mean that “both sides lose” when polarized on being competitive, while being polarized on being collaborative might see the win-win as the best possible option. The key in this case is to consider that both competition and collaboration are important, and nothing other than our bias in each direction is dictating us that the combination of both conditions is negative. Most of the time our bias makes us reject the possibility of combining both traits, or even worse, the possibility of combining the two elements is not even considered as an option.

To add to this example perhaps the reader noticed that I mentioned how “in the competitive world of capitalism … a win-win condition may not be considered positive.” By making this comment I am running the risk of being automatically labelled as somebody that does not like capitalism, or that is against capitalism, and depending on the reader’s bias, I might get a label of “less competitive” or even “socialist” regardless if that is far from the truth.

Unfortunately looking to integrate different points of view is very difficult in the world today, and polarization in most human activities is getting worse. We can observe the conflicts in politics, civil rights, religion, etc. in which the addition of strengths, collaboration, and integration of effort that the opposites provide, as an opportunity to achieve better results is every day more difficult. It appears that a new paradigm is largely needed to minimize polarization and conflict, and this new paradigm might be based in Complementarity. Just to consider a framework in which the tendency is not to automatically reject but to stop and think about possible integration of strengths will minimize waste of energy in unnecessary conflicts, and will most probably result in better human connection at all levels.

It is generally assumed, that if societies are challenged by some common threat, they might unite to fight against such threat. Unfortunately, in the past two years, we have seen that the challenge presented by the Covid-19 pandemic, which has affected the whole world the same regardless of all human differences, has not been a catalyst for collaboration, but in some instances, has generated a higher level of polarization. This condition calls for the urgent need of a different paradigm in which both individual and community goals can be integrated.

In science, the materialistic paradigm appears to have reached its limit, but is still very much part of the dogma and is fiercely fighting for survival. Again, the possibility of considering a Complementarity based paradigm could give a major boost to future scientific developments. As is always the case with paradigm changes, the dogma fortress is holding up, focused in maintaining the status-quo and power status. There is, however, momentum in some areas that might require different mental models, and the scientific challenges might require to abandon old limitations. Perhaps, newer generations of scientists, entrepreneurs, and individuals in general might be more open-minded to collaborative and Complementarity based mental models.