Opposites

Alexander M. Goldfinger

[Reprinted from The Gargoyle, December, 1962]

How much of our intellectual "thinking," our convictions, our political and social views are the result of our cultural pattern influenced by language, the written and the spoken word.

Words are symbols. Yet most if not all our intellectual pursuits are in words. It has been demonstrated many times that the greater a vocabulary possessed by an individual, the greater is his potential for constructive thinking often emerge the guideposts of knowledge, of behavior and adaptation to our environment.

Yet words, being symbols and not reality may also be the cause of some of the maladjustments in human behavior. Most of us are aware of our predilection for learning and thinking in words of opposites. We unhesitatingly answer to word suggestions such as "good" by responding "bad" to "black" by answering "white" to "right" by replying "wrong."

How many of us are aware that this preoccupation with opposites becomes the texture of our outlook upon the world and of our fellow-men.

We unthinkingly seek in all of nature, in all the behavior of humans the apotheosis of our concept of opposites. For example, in practically all the "westerns" shown on television there are the "good guys" and the "bad guys" and each prototype is usually depicted with all the virtues and the vices attendant upon our concept of "good" and "bad." The pioneers are usually the "good" and the native Indians are the "bad."

Do we consider that the natives felt that the pioneers were intruders and marauders, bent upon stealing the land which the Indians considered as theirs.

Continuing to "think" in words of opposites is evidenced in our willingness to accept the idea that "if you are not with us, you are against us." This thought projects itself in our relationship and behavior in the world scene. We are in a cold war status with the Soviet Union. Many small nations now or recently emerged from colonial status re engrossed with their own problems, political and economic and are not taking sides in the cold war. They call themselves "unaligned." And, in truth this fits their view of the great powers. But, carrying out our concept that "if you are not with us you are against us" we view their aloofness as ingratitude for favors bestowed or as callousness to despotism if not outright enmity towards us.

This is not a defence of the unaligned countries. The writer does not agree with the eagerness of Premier Nehru of India in taking the United States to task and his unwillingness to condemn in a positive way the Soviet rape of Hungary. But our thinking in terms of "black" and "white," "right" and "wrong" make us blind to the fact that there are "grays" and that all the "right" may not be possessed by us and all the "wrong" by those who oppose us.

Were it not for the fact that humans, including the Russians, view the world in words and thoughts of opposites and thereby claim for themselves the justification of their behavior, more tolerance for the other person's views, his behavior, influenced as it is by a different cultural pattern, might prevail.

Henry George, as a social philosopher, used the expression, "association in equality" as the ultimate goal of human behavior. The habit of thinking in terms of "right" and "wrong" leads humans to look upon human behavior that is unfamiliar, strange and different as "wrong."

We commonly characterize human behavior as normal and abnormal, again resorting to opposites. Yet we know that humans react in as many different ways as there are people, to similar situations.

The writer, some years ago, was one of six lawyers who were litigating a will contest based upon the testamentary capacity of the testator. For days on end, during the trial, witnesses related the strange utterances and behavior of the testator. Then, for more days, medical doctors and psychiatrists testified, responding to questions as to whether such and such behavior would be considered "normal" or "abnormal" or "sane" or "insane." Among the experts there was more divergence of opinion than among the laymen who had opinions. The remarkable thing was that one of the expert psychiatrist on the witness stand, who had just characterized the acts of the testator as "sane" and "normal" suddenly interpreted an innocent question by the writer as a revelation of an unknown episode in the doctor's past and the doctor went into an emotional exhibition, ending up by sobbing like a child. Jokingly, thereafter, several of the lawyers concluded that psychiatrists must be "off the beaten path" mentally and emotionally, so how can they determine norms of human behavior in others.

In science and in scientific experiments, basic conditions are controlled and, with all other factors but one the same in successive experiments, the change of the one variable factor often leads to interesting and constructive results.

In human relations and behavior, it is not possible to control the factors causing behavior so that there shall be the sameness of all factors but one variable. Each person has a different ethnic, cultural, environmental influence to affect his behavior than every other person. When we use the word "environment" we mean the sum total of each and every experience in the person's life, all of which may and will affect his subsequent behavior.

We hear so much these days about the electronic computers and other machines which in common parlance are sometimes referred to as "electronic brains." Actually, remarkable as these machines are, they are but empty storage bins into which myriads of facts, figures and data can be fed by humans and, if the machine is properly "instructed" to perform certain functions, the data stored in the machine can be correlated and then the machine can "predict" or advise in order to obtain certain desired results.

Intricate and remarkable as the machine is, it is less remarkable than the human brain which acts in a manner similar to the machine. Every experience of the person is stored in his brain and patterns of previous behavior emerge under similar experiences. We are what we are because our brains motivate us, and the data stored in our brains is fed to us causing us to do what we do.

Since this is so, and since each person's stored experiences differ from every other person's it would be more tolerant, more conducive to harmonious human relations if, instead of viewing the world and people as "right" or "wrong" we attempted to determine why they behaved as they do, and if their culture and environment can be changed for the better, to consider that their reactions and behavior might more readily conform to ours.

Now to return to Henry George's expression "association in equality," we can realize that not alone in the economic field can there be association in equality founded upon justice, but also in the field of human relations in the social and political patterns.

If instead of using the usual opposites "right" and "wrong" we viewed with sympathetic understanding the motivations and reasons for behavior different from our own or even antagonistic to our own, we might benefit by understanding those whose behavior differs from our own, and true equality in association might be attainable.

In likening our brains with its stored data to the electronic machines, we do not mean that man's behavior is entirely mechanistic. We recognize that man's will is a behavioral factor, but even in this respect, if the individual has by choice or cultural influence adopted a moral and ethical code by which he intends to act, this is data which his brain stores and releases as a motivating factor to subsequent behavior.

Let us not shackle our wonderful brains with preconceived concepts of opposites, "black" or "white," "right or wrong," "good or bad" but recognize that as the spectrum changes colors not by sharp contrasts, but by blending and fading from one color to another, all human behavior is likewise not at the extremes, poles apart, and thus we may hope to achieve the ultimate goal in the concept that, in fact, all men are brothers.