The constant debate about polarity is getting tiring

[Andrew Gubb]

I guess it's a tricky subject, but it seems like we have too many debates that go nowhere about polarity. It would be nice if we could perhaps make a collection of great posts about the topic and sticky it with big letters saying IMPORTANT!!!! READ THIS BEFORE ASKING ABOUT POLARITY!!!!!!!!

I think that it is a very simple subject, but many people start complicating it. Here's some of the errors I see:

Making DW/LW into a vanity club that they want to join in (Can I be part of the Lightwork club if I have lots of sex?)

Thinking DW/LW is about being selfish or unselfish, rather than an energy thing

Thinking DW/LW is some sort of philosophy or code, rather than an energy thing

Thinking that becoming one or the other is a matter of choosing a new label for yourself, rather than a work that goes on over the course of lifetimes, plural, and which is never truly finished (as far as I know)

Thinking that DW/LW is a concept which can be invented rather than a description of what goes on in real life. You don't invent a tree by giving it a name, polarity wasn't invented by describing it

Thinking that this goes on in the safety of your own head and over the screen rather than in the real world

Mental masturbation and vanity of all sorts


Sorry if I'm being a blunt here, but I think all of the repeated questions and false gurus are clogging up the forum. As I said, it's a pretty simple thing, though it can take a while for it to "click". Stickying something written by guys who've had this click - I definitely vote Plato for this - would be pretty helpful. And a direction to read and reread the original posts by Steve on polarity before asking anything would help. I'd be glad to contribute myself, too

[seeker5]

Great point Andrew. We need a way to get newish people up to speed on the polarity stuff.

[bluedragon]

I think it would be a great idea. Can you do the same for the subjective reality topic?

P.S. What do you mean by "an energy thing"? I got to admit I also thought (and still think) that darkworking was about being selfish (centered on doing what is best for yourself). Isn't that what selfish means?

[Angela]

Well, we could do the same thing with subjective reality, paranormal phenomena, diet and exercise, productivity, polyamory, the law of attraction, 100% responsibility, and any other concept that is discussed in the forums.

People discover what works for them by discussing and debating these issues, and there is no one "right" answer -- no one "right" belief about polarity that is the definitive reference that a person should know before he steps into discussion or debate about it.

I think it would be pretty horrible to have a specified guru teaching the rights and wrongs of topics discussed here. A guru is only a guru unto herself -- she can only know what is right or wrong in her life, not in the lives of others.

I agree that reading Steve's articles is a really good idea, and it would be helpful to refer new members to the appropriate articles (thought tracking them down and linking might end up being just as annoying to the experienced members).

I think these concepts expand and become more clear for everyone who participates as we hear both from people who seem pretty up-to-speed AND people who are just figuring it out, or even completely clueless. It all contributes to exactly the perfect understanding and growth, I think, for everyone involved. No one is "right" or "wrong" about their subjective experiences with subjective concepts. Talking about them and noticing what bugs you is really valuable!

One way you personally might deal with it, Andrew, aside from refraining from participating in discussions with the people who are not "up to speed," is to start a thread and specifically state your "rules" for that thread -- like maybe: "This thread is for discussion of xyz aspect of polarity ONLY. Please read Steve's article "abc" before posting here." And the moderators will help you keep your thread on topic.

[Dan.Linehan]

I've been thinking a lot about polarity lately. I recently read Atlas Shrugged and the book discusses the topic quite a bit.

There is really only one core difference between a polarized lightworker and a polarized darkworker. The polarized darkworker is willing to use force (and setup systems of force) while the polarized lightworker always trades fairly.

The light and dark polarizations are not diametrically opposed as people might imagine. They are simply two branches both growing from the same trunk of rational self-interest.

The vast majority of people never love themselves enough to have a rational self-interest in their own lives, thus making them unpolarized, the opposite of both light and darkworking.

[Angela]

Does Atlas Shrugged explicitly use terms like "polarity" or "lightworker"? Or is the concept expressed some other way?

[Dan.Linehan]

Originally Posted by Angela

Does Atlas Shrugged explicitly use terms like "polarity" or "lightworker"? Or is the concept expressed some other way?

The concepts are expressed throughout the central premise and main themes of the book, but she doesn't use those specific terms, no.

[Angela]

I'll have to read that. Have heard good things about it.

[Daniel Birdick]

Originally Posted by Angela

No one is "right" or "wrong" about their subjective experiences with subjective concepts.

Zackley!

[Andrew Brunelle]

Polarization is in the eye of the beholder. We all have our own and unique perspectives on polarity and if you want to start a particular thread that discusses certain aspects, go ahead. The person who ultimately decides if they are a darkworker/lightworker is oneself. But if people are curious, why not just direct them to some of Steve's articles to explain exactly what you are talking about? That's all. Then the majority of the people discussing the subject will have knowledge to go by.

[Michael Chui]

Originally Posted by Angela

People discover what works for them by discussing and debating these issues, and there is no one "right" answer -- no one "right" belief about polarity that is the definitive reference that a person should know before he steps into discussion or debate about it.

I'm a lightworker AND a darkworker. Because I said so. In fact, I just decided that now. I'm also polarized to blue, since I occasionally get blue in the face, and polarized to orange, because there are orange cones around my cubicle. I'd like to get more colors, since light and dark seem kinda limiting and binary. Anyone have suggestions on how to polarize to chartreuse? Also, I'm interested in 40% gray.

What do you mean that's not what polarity is about? How dare you insult my perspective with petty, base things like social contracts. Fear and love? What's that got to do with it? Those are oversimplifications. The words don't even mean anything. You should have magenta and set it against black. That's a good polarization. I knew a witch doctor once who was magenta on black. I met her in New Orleans.

On the other hand, if you take red and mix it with lavender on a field azure with a lion supine, you're probably in the wrong century. Polarizations are attuned to a time period, you see. Sure, back in the Age of Pisces, red and lavender might have been ideal, but it's simply out of place in today's world. You'd have to be Amish or something to really get a workout of your polarization.

Anyways, back on topic. I'm trying to figure out how to polarize to chartreuse or 40% gray. Help, please?

[Angela]

Take a polaroid!

Michael, are you making the point that without some adherence to the social contract of agreeing to certain tenets of "polarity," the conversation could explode into a crazy-quilt paint-spattered Jackson-Pollack disconnected melee?

[Plato]

No, I think he's making the point that he needs some love. It's ok, Michael, really. Gimme a hug. Actually, somebody else, I don't want snot and drool on my T-shirt.

[Plato]

Originally Posted by Andrew Gubb

Sorry if I'm being a blunt here, but I think all of the repeated questions and false gurus are clogging up the forum. As I said, it's a pretty simple thing, though it can take a while for it to "click". Stickying something written by guys who've had this click - I definitely vote Plato for this - would be pretty helpful. And a direction to read and reread the original posts by Steve on polarity before asking anything would help. I'd be glad to contribute myself, too

Haha, marvellous.

I hope it happens. It could be the beginning of a beautiful career in religious zealotry. I can't deny I want that.

[Michael Chui]

Originally Posted by Angela

Michael, are you making the point that without some adherence to the social contract of agreeing to certain tenets of "polarity," the conversation could explode into a crazy-quilt paint-spattered Jackson-Pollack disconnected melee?

No, I am not. Let's try again.

Do you remember the discussion with yossarian about feminism? It was in the thread about why should a man bother getting married. What distinguishes the concept of "polarity" from the concept of "feminism"? Why was he wrong about one, but no one can be wrong about the other?

Or, to put it another way, do the concepts behind our words actually exist? Is there any meaning behind the noise and the clamor? Are we lying when we use the same word to mean different things? Do we really have any idea what we're talking about?

You're right that "people discover what works for them by discussing these topics". However, that stance also says that these topics are actually meaningless, and simply act as a focus for reflection, rather than having any substance in and of themselves. A very subjective realist stance, to be sure, and thus quite valid, but that is nonetheless the consequence.

According to the statement you made, there is no such thing as polarity.

[Angela]

Originally Posted by Michael Chui

Why was he wrong about one, but no one can be wrong about the other?

Who said he was wrong? Not me. I specifically said quite the opposite.

According to the statement you made, there is no such thing as polarity.

I wouldn't put it that way. I would say that polarity is like feminism, though. There's no real, objective substance to either one, but there is a gestalt of concept as a result of people contributing to the gestalt by viewing it through their lens. As each person contributes by viewing it as they do, and perhaps expressing how it looks, the apparent shape shifts for others, too.

Like the Internet! There is certainly such a thing, I reckon, but all it is is the construction of people's perspective and contribution. From time to time, people try to establish rules about what the Internet *should* be, and the shape of the concept shifts and changes as people make their own rules.

But I get that the OP disagrees -- it seems that he believes that polarity exists as a real, objective "thing" in the world, a physical phenomenon, the way many people see gravity. It makes sense to write a manual, or have a definitive point of reference, like a guru, if you're looking at it from that perspective.

[Michael Chui]

Originally Posted by Angela

Who said he was wrong? Not me. I specifically said quite the opposite.

I noticed. That was Dan, not you. I was late for work when I wrote that. =/

Originally Posted by Angela

There's no real, objective substance to either one, but there is a gestalt of concept as a result of people contributing to the gestalt by viewing it through their lens. As each person contributes by viewing it as they do, and perhaps expressing how it looks, the apparent shape shifts for others, too.

Like the Internet! There is certainly such a thing, I reckon, but all it is is the construction of people's perspective and contribution. From time to time, people try to establish rules about what the Internet *should* be, and the shape of the concept shifts and changes as people make their own rules.

Erk. You should have stuck to something I don't know very well. The Internet does exist independent of people's beliefs and perspectives. I found a very excellent summarization of it, yesterday: Design for the Internet.

It's unfair to say something doesn't really exist simply because most people don't understand its reality. If you were to apply that reasoning to one of your own preferred words, empowerment, I imagine you wouldn't think quite the same way. Does empowerment actually exist? Is it something else--say, an indirect form of oppression--simply because someone imagines it so?

Originally Posted by Angela

it seems that he believes that polarity exists as a real, objective "thing" in the world, a physical phenomenon, the way many people see gravity.

But... but... gravity isn't a real, objective thing in the world.

It's not really a matter of its physicality, though: it's a matter of atomicity. We might call various artforms Impressionist or Cubist; we might call philosophies a vague Western, or Aristotlian, or Deleuzian; we might name religions Buddhism or shamanism. These aren't physical things, either, but we can't meaningfully discuss them without some agreement as to what they are. We can discuss shamanism in general, or North American shamanism, or Iroquois shamanism or Eskimo or Siberian or African. We can discuss the origins of Buddhism in Hinduism, or its derivations in China, Japan, in hacker culture. But we can only do this because we know what it is, and we also know what it's not. That's atomicity.

When we don't, we find that our conversations go in circles and are nothing more than screaming matches at their most lively. The most common statement will end up being, "Wait... but that's not how it works." Imagine if we blamed atheism for Stalinism. You can certainly make the connection, but the two concepts aren't actually related. I can say that because I know what atheism is, and I know what Stalinism is, and I know there are a thousand intermediate steps between the two that make a world of difference. Simply because someone thinks they're the same only means that they're flat-out wrong, and nothing else.

I ramble.

Originally Posted by Angela

It makes sense to write a manual, or have a definitive point of reference, like a guru, if you're looking at it from that perspective.

As far as I'm concerned, we're agreed here. I still don't think you quite got what I was trying for, especially with the guru thing, but if you can see that far, it feels like I've made enough progress.

Holy crap I wrote a lot.

[Angela]

Originally Posted by Michael Chui

It's unfair to say something doesn't really exist simply because most people don't understand its reality.

No -- I didn't say or mean that. (maybe Dan did ) Rather: it does exist, and it's existence is the understanding people have of its "reality."

But... but... gravity isn't a real, objective thing in the world.

I know. That's why I was careful to say: "the way many people see it."

I ramble.

I love it when you do that.

As far as I'm concerned, we're agreed here. I still don't think you quite got what I was trying for, especially with the guru thing, but if you can see that far, it feels like I've made enough progress.

I'm gonna take your word on that -- I sort of lost track of what we were talking about.

[Michael Chui]

Originally Posted by Angela

No -- I didn't say or mean that. (maybe Dan did ) Rather: it does exist, and it's existence is the understanding people have of its "reality."

Hm, I've deleted my response to this four times now. Let me backtrack, since I've erased the logical history of how I got from the quoted to my response.

A concept, a philosophy, an idea: whatever generic name you are pleased to assign to things like polarity or feminism or religion: has a lifespan. They are born when they are imagined and understood, yes. They are amorphous and unbounded as contributors work out the details and consequences of the idea, yes. But at this point, it crystallizes. It becomes a Thing, of Platonic existence, that has a nucleus of certainty with an electron cloud of questions. Then it fragments. Perhaps the original group dies, or is usurped. But the Thing is then derived into new Things, following the same process. When people assign it the same name, then it's extremely confusing, but that's what adjectives are for. Then it stops being thought of and considered. At some point, it is forgotten, and dies.

Socrates would wring my neck. He would have agreed with you, I think; Plato is the one who decided that things should be written down after all.

The crystallization is what I'm talking about. It's a maturing of an idea to a point where it can be thought of reductively. What you're talking about is something that never crystallizes. It's always liquid, morphing and changing, instable and uncertain. It never grows up; it's never its own person.

Now, to be honest, this personification is making me nervous, and I do need to think about this. A lot of what you're arguing is valid, and you can see the same process when literature people talk about Early Shakespeare versus Late Shakespeare, or when people compare authors and poets embittered by the world wars. What made them profoundly distinct arguably never crystallized.

But what Moses and Joshua did for Judaism, or Constantine and Augustine for Christianity, Hammurabi for law, Popper for science, Cervantes for the novel form, Jung for personality psychology, Knuth for algorithms, Campbell and Tolkien for mythology: these were such major crystallizations. And this wasn't a bad thing. It made ideas accessible, because it was possible to have a solid grasp on them, and people were thus able to dissect those thoughts and form new ones. Would we have Shakespeare, if not for Plato? Who knows.

I'm off the beaten track now. I'll head back to it.

Without the crystallization, you may have something amorphous. You can say something is Goethe, but what are you actually saying with that? That it reminds you of Goethe? Why? How? In what respect? Which details, and why those? What broad respect? There's a shape there that you can compare and contrast with another shape, pointing out the differences, the similarities. That shape is the thing, the echo of their personality through their creations.

With the crystallization, you can definitely say that yes, the concept of inertia is defined as a zero acceleration, and with acceleration, you have a force: the first two Newtonian laws of motion; if someone says Newtonian force happens without acceleration, then they're simply wrong. That yes, a broadly tripartite story of exploration, heroism, and triumphal return is a Campbellian monomyth, but no, Romeo and Juliet is not an example of it because Romeo does not attain Master of Two Worlds, but runs away, chooses death and is lost to his community, never redeeming or raising it up with an elixir of life or magical knowledge.

Originally Posted by Angela

I love it when you do that.

Heh. No one has dared say that since high school. Incidentally, I've been working on a system of morality. It's actually quite elegant at the moment, which probably means it's completely wrong. Currently composed of 11 words and 8 arrows. ^_^

[Daniel Birdick]

Interesting. I agree with what you’re saying here. It just doesn’t apply to Steve’s polarity theory does it? Or does it?

[Michael Chui]

Originally Posted by Daniel Birdick

Interesting. I agree with what you’re saying here. It just doesn’t apply to Steve’s polarity theory does it? Or does it?

It applies entirely. The idea of polarity is an idea with a lifespan like any other. If some of my rambling was unclear, feel free to ask about it.

[Daniel Birdick]

Originally Posted by Michael Chui

It applies entirely. The idea of polarity is an idea with a lifespan like any other. If some of my rambling was unclear, feel free to ask about it.

It seems to me like you’re saying that people can’t have meaningful discussions about ideas if those ideas are allowed to mean whatever any particular participant in the conversation wants them to mean. I get that. Mutual agreement on the meaning of the subject in question would be essential to having a coherent dialogue. It makes sense if that’s what you’re saying. I suppose the “problem” that comes up for me when applying this to Steve’s polarity concept is that I don’t buy all of the premises that come with it. I see no reason to. It doesn’t seem to be a coherent philosophical system nor does appear to be an accurate snapshot of real world psychology. What’s in the polarization concept that can be “crystallized” other than yet another dogma, of the New Age variety rather than the traditional religious sort? Hence my pick and choose approach when it comes to this particular concept. Outside of conversation or debate, why should I or anyone else bother to “get it right” when as far as I can tell, there’s nothing there to be right or wrong about?

[Michael Chui]

Originally Posted by Daniel Birdick

I suppose the “problem” that comes up for me when applying this to Steve’s polarity concept is that I don’t buy all of the premises that come with it. I see no reason to. It doesn’t seem to be a coherent philosophical system nor does appear to be an accurate snapshot of real world psychology.

But that's not what a crystallized idea is. There's no requirement that the idea is Truth, has coherence or consistent logic; it just needs to be stable. Part of what validates the analogy of the lifespan is that a person's image is an idea, too. For the sake of discussion, let's invent a concept. I'll call it Endymism, because Dan Simmons' Endymion happens to be sitting on the desk, and we'll define it as the philosophical perspective acquired by close friendship with a messiah figure.

Is this idea crystallized? We could say that it is: if we accept that there's nothing more to it--it's just a perspective, after all--then we know what it refers to and what it doesn't. Or we could push and prod at it, maybe expand it from friendship to being of the same community, or narrow it to being an intimate lover. In that case, it isn't crystallized... for us.

Now, let's say you're the one making these suggestions, and I don't like them. In fact, I'm dead set against them. In that case, Endymism is crystallized for me, and you're deriving a new concept from it. If the idea gains traction, they might call it Michaelean Endymism and Danielean Endymism. Endymism, then, is naturally reclassified in the participants' mind as something more abstract that ably encompasses both ideas. Or they might choose to call it Endymism and Neo-Endymism, in which case my originally professed version would have the esteem of the better name.

Originally Posted by Daniel Birdick

Hence my pick and choose approach when it comes to this particular concept.

And this is precisely it. You can pick and choose from it because it has crystallized. You know what it is, and you know what it isn't. You know what it's made out of. So you can take some things that you like, discard other things you don't, and build a new concept.

Were it Endymism, you might have taken the relation to the messiah figure as a good thing, but the stipulation of friendship to be a triviality.

If it weren't crystallized, then you would instead find yourself asking questions rather than making assertions. You wouldn't be able to say it's just New Age foolishness, because you couldn't compare it to other New Age concepts. Because it'd be incomprehensible: the human mind trembles before the awesome expanse of true chaos. You can't reject it, because you don't know what it is, but neither can you accept it.

[Daniel Birdick]

Originally Posted by Michael Chui

And this is precisely it. You can pick and choose from it because it has crystallized. You know what it is, and you know what it isn't. You know what it's made out of. So you can take some things that you like, discard other things you don't, and build a new concept.

Ah. I see. I get what you’re saying and I completely agree. Using your terminology polarization is crystallized. So my “beef” isn’t there then, it’s in the application of it, or rather how I’m supposed to apply it. You’ve goaded me into being more precise in my thinking. Thanks for that man, I appreciate it.

[Michael Chui]

Quite welcome, and glad to hear it. For my part, I think I'm going to work on figuring out how to make my point in less than three paragraphs.