Playing with Opposites
https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/playing-opposites-ali-anani-phd/
I responded to comments on my previous post by two great minds as follows:
Thank you Sara Jacobovici for indeed it is the movement that enables the individuals to pull him or herself out of that “stuck” place.” So, I believe very much now in adopting moving rather than static metaphors. Static metaphors represent objects stuck in one place whereas moving ones are more realistic. Again, the word movement opens many windows of thinking for us. What kind of movement? Linear, spinning, curly, wavy, spiral and the scenarios evolve even more. Dear Muhannad Ramahi stories and the books you referred to are great examples of movement. You wrote, “Rising above their limitations and pushing boundaries outside their comfort zone was the main reason for them to be able to unshackle their potentials and go extreme sideways”.
The above exchange of comments prompted me to look for applied examples of opposites and their movement. One example that came to my mind is heads and tails. I found myself repeatedly saying “The head is head and the tail is tail”. Is this correct? If they are so, movement isn’t possible and something must be wrong. How about linking the head and tail? Snakes do it and so dogs do. I feel new perspectives shall emerge. Watching the video shows the movement of the opposites head and tail in creative ways.
The opponents trapped themselves into one fixed approach: the need for experimental proof. They need to couple with imagination.
Humans tend to prefer to think of heads and tails as two separate domains. The Noble Prize laureate Hermann Staudinger was the first chemist to suggest the presence of polymers and that the repeated head to tail bonding between active monomers gave long polymeric chains. At his time it was difficult to prove the existence of polymers and Staudinger used his powerful imagination to suggest their existence. Prominent scientists opposed him to the extent that one famous scientist is reported to have said to Staudinger that if it was not for the success of his previous work he would have called him mad. The opponents trapped themselves into one fixed approach: the need for experimental proof. Fixed opinions have no movement and are wrong. They need to couple with imagination. It is spinning the two together that make new thinking emerge. Not only dogs link heads to tails; some molecules do. These molecules do show exceptional properties. The dance of imagination and experiments together makes a big difference in how we think.
One interesting example in agriculture is the use of sand and clay. Clay absorbs water and stores heats. In contrast, sand allows water and heat to pass through. It is by mixing the two opposites that opened many opportunities to produce fruits in new soils. During a visit to Pilsen and the ILO Lab in 1986, I had the opportunity to visit farms producing exceptional-quality oranges from soils with the proper portions of both sand and clay. The water flow (movement) improved a lot because of having the two opposite behaving materials work together. This game of playing on differences makes the difficult easy.
The human eye has photoreceptors in the shapes of rod and cones. The rods are more numerous, some 120 million, and are more sensitive than the cones. However, they are not sensitive to color. The 6 to 7 million cones provide the eye’s color sensitivity and they are much more concentrated in the central yellow spot known as the macula. In the center of that region is the “fovea centralis”, a 0.3 mm diameter rod-free area with very thin, densely packed cones. The rods and cones collect the information that is fired to our brains. They act as one unit in spite of their differences. They move together in harmony. Opposites may work together.
Questions are “mind-eye” openers only if they work in a form that the human eye works. Questions can’t be all rods or cones to fulfill their functions well. Open and closed questions need to move together to collect information. They need to flow like the rods and cones do. It is not opposite attracts or not as much as it is if opposites may spin their movement together and great things shall happen.
The Adjacent Opposites
https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/adjacent-opposites-ali-anani-phd/
Some comments send the author into new lands that he has not even thought they exist. One comment did that to me. Martin Jay commented on my discussion thread titled Self-Organizing Is a Form of Emerging Rewards by saying “I found “Thinking Fast and Slow” by Daniel Kahneman an amazing recommendation by renowned thinkers. I have just got the copy. Might take time to complete this. I would love to hear about its relevance to Dr. Ali’s thought-provoking post”. Thinking, Fast and Slow is a best-selling 2011 book by Nobel Memorial Prize in Economics winner Daniel Kahneman.
It is amazing how changing the names changes perspectives. We are familiar with the notation that our brains have two parts: the left half is for logical thinking, whereas the right part is for imaginative and creative thinking. Logical thinking is slow because it requires reasoning. In contrast, creative thinking may take no time as it comes as a spark. The two opposites are neighboring each other. However; too much use of one may subdue the other.
We may go on and change the names of the two parts of the brain. For example, the energy-consuming half and the relaxed half. This change of names also creates different references in our minds and new ideas may emerge accordingly. I wonder if I call the two haves the relaxed versus the energized would still have an effect on us. Would I dare to name the logical part as the conversion half and the right brain as the divergent half? I have already dared. Diversion and conversion next door to each other. One half of the mind focusing and the other sending us on a journey of creative imagination.
I still could go on and call one part the habitual part as we tend to go in our comfort zone of repeating what we are familiar with. The other half of the brain is the inhabitual or infrequent part. Again, two opposites adjacent to each other. Are we living in the struggle of the opposites or their synchronization? Reverting to using habits is a form of fast thinking. Imagination is faster than logical thinking. So, when it comes to habits are we experiencing two fast thinking operating simultaneously?
Would I be right to call the two halves of the brain the fearless and the fearful halves? Or, maybe better, the focused and orderly thinking half of the brain versus the unfocused and disorderly part of the brain? One part of the brain that generates chaotic ideas whereas the other half tries to suppress chaos by trying to put idea-generation into order.
I could go on and name the left brain the tree and the right brain the forest. The left brain focuses and sets up orderly steps for logical thinking. The right brain sees the broad picture, the whole landscape, and then may generate divergent ideas. Our minds are in the struggle between seeing a focused possibility or lots of them. This is similar to instructing a cook to use curry spice versus instructing him to use a spice of his choice. In the first case, we focus his attention to one choice> because of having the habit of eating curry-spiced food we know the outcome and logically it is something that we like. In the second scenario, we are giving the cook the choice, but we are not sure of the outcome. Maybe the food would taste good or not. There are doubts, adventure, discovery, and hidden costs if we opt for this scenario. We are not in the comfort zone of selecting a car as long it is black. We are taking our option of selecting a color that we may later regret or not.
There are people who tend to use logical thinking much more than imaginative thinking. And there are people on the opposite tending to use imaginative thinking than logical thinking. And there are people who switch between the two opposites. Who are happier? More productive?
You may also read my presentations on opposites. These include:
The iceberg of opposites https://pt.slideshare.net/hudali15/the-iceberg-of-opposites
Unequal opposites https://www.slideshare.net/hudali15/unequal-opposites
Coexistence of Opposites https://www.slideshare.net/hudali15/coexistence-of-opposites
