Contradictions reveal answers

I repeatedly find that it is in the collision of opposing points of view that a deeper understanding is to be found.

“The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in mind at the same time and still retain the ability to function.” – F. Scott Fitzgerald

The opposite of a great truth is another truth.” ― Niels Bohr

Si vis pacem, para bellum

Philosophical systems like Taoism1 and Buddhism2 heavily use this idea in their classic works. The Tao Te Ching is full of them, and so are the koans.

The idea might seem a natural fit for the more subjective areas of knowledge, there are examples from the very precise realms of mathematics too. The paradoxes there are illuminating of the gaps in how we think and understand and even spurs the development of new mathematics. In the Book of Why, Judea Pearl uses the Simpson’s Paradox among others to explain causal effects.

Paradox in its original Latin means “seemingly absurd but actually true”. In search of clarity we flee paradoxes, but we must lean in to them instead.

Also, between the opposites is the way. The road is buffeted by the edges. The middle path of Buddha is not the ‘middle’ of the road, it’s everything between the edges. We zig and we zag to avoid the roadblocks.

Progress is made when you hold hubris and humility together. The hubris to act, the humility to learn.

Progress is made when you hold impatience and patience together. Impatient to act, patient for results. (Speed matters.)

In Psychology of Money, Morgan Housel says this about optimism and pessimism.

“Optimism and pessimism can coexist. If you look hard enough you’ll see them next to each other in virtually every successful company and successful career. They seem like opposites, but they work together to keep everything in balance.”

Discipline, and Freedom. (Jocko) Destruction, and Creation. (John Boyd) Yin, and Yang.

  1. “Paradox is often thought of as a standard device of Taoist psychology, used to cross imperceptible barriers of awareness.” – Thomas Cleary, The Art of War ↩

  2. “Taoist and Buddhist literature have been described—both by Easterners writing for Westerners and by Westerners writing for other Westerners—as paradoxical, so frequently and to such a degree that paradox is commonly considered one of the major characteristics or devices of this literature. The orientation of The Art of War toward winning without fighting, for example, is typical of this sort of paradox, which is there to invite attention to its own logic. It may paradoxically be nonparadoxical, therefore, to find that the paradox of ambiguity is an exact science in the Taoist literature of higher psychology.” – Thomas Cleary, The Art of War ↩

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