Experiential Dualism

As per usual, I am offering you a little piece of music which assisted me in writing this article. If it enhanced my experience I can only hope it will enhance yours too. I seemingly came across these thoughts only while this music was playing, perhaps it's a portal into the realm where this thought resides. Or maybe I'm just weird.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dq0h20jGiFk

This realm of physicality that we inhabit harbors lessons, most commonly in the form of dualism. You only appreciate the warm sunlight of summer because you endure the cold, bitter and dark period of winter, if you live in a dualistic climate. Perhaps closer to the equator they’ve become desensitized to how benevolent the sun is, it’s always there and always provides warmth. Regardless, each element of life is one which has two sides. 

In my previous article, I wrote about knowledge for the sake of knowledge versus practical knowledge, as if the two are somehow mutually exclusive. This was erroneous and I believe I inadequately conveyed the message I wished to convey, but you first must become wet before you can become dry, so that mistake was ultimately beneficial. Instead of trying to compare the two as though they are distinct qualities, I really wanted to discuss the harmony between the two. I rushed that one, and here I am correcting it while also exploring the duality of other things, and the lessons we can extract from those things, although, I am limited by experience. I can't claim to know things I haven't experienced.

On the topic of knowledge and the two realms of knowledge, I do believe that acquiring knowledge in the pursuit of satiating curiosity is beneficial to humans, it doesn’t necessarily only need to be practical. However, I do believe that acquiring a fundamental basis in practical knowledge is vital, perhaps even imperative, before journeying into the deeper realms of knowledge. As an analogy, the shovel with which you dig is critical to the quality of the dig. If you haven’t cemented a fundamental basis in practical knowledge, you’re going to be journeying forward with an inadequate lens, or machine. 

Let’s say you are inquiring into the nature of ancient civilizations and in order to do so you must traverse miles through the jungle to reach your area of investigation. Well if you’re fighting an upset stomach and a headache the entire way there, you’re going to be unfit to perform a detailed and deep analysis of the area, ultimately damaging the results of your inquest. Or let’s say you’re concerned with philosophical matters and you begin to delve into the nature of morality but you’ve been engaged in deleterious activities over the past few weeks; you’ve been drinking, you recently ate a highly-preserved bagel with loads of cream cheese on it, or any other activity that is pursued for indulgence. Your results will not be what you could achieve if you had nourished yourself properly and rested properly.

This begins to get into ritual and habit, both very substantial components of human nature. Before I do any writing, I must journal for a minimum of ten minutes. I do this every single time I sit down to write and without this preparatory ritual, my writing is always worse. The journaling is now fundamental to my writing because it signals my brain to channel my energy into writing, and less energy into other things, allowing me to more concisely convey my thought. Just as the dark of the night signals your brain to produce certain hormones and so does the daylight signal your brain to produce certain hormones, creating a concrete and predictable ritual around tasks increases efficiency. 

Back to the original point of dualism though, I’d like to explore dualism in the form of suffering and pleasure in the next part of this article. The most inexpensive and humbling form of suffering is endurance running. Endurance running will take you through a multitude of different emotions but the overlying theme will be suffering. The other day on one of my runs I was going through a particularly technical part of trail while my favorite song was playing quite loudly in my headphones. Needless to say, I was in the zone. Despite being wholly exhausted from the previous mileage, I was in a state of absolute ecstasy, I know this because I cried once I reached the top of the trail and it was beyond my control. Through running over the past year, I’ve cultivated a large character around the activity. I’ll delve deeper into the characteristics attained through running in another article. What caused me to cry once I reached the top of the trail were images of my past-self, stretching all the way back to infancy. It was as if I watched myself grow and develop into this six-foot endurance-ape from an infant. From this diminutive, frail child who absolutely required the support of a parent to this young man who can run through kilometers of technical trail without a hiccup. I could probably hunt on my own now, not to get too self-congratulatory. The state of ecstasy was only reached through an entire year of continuous and consistent suffering. The pain of my first endurance excursion is a pleasant warm-up now. I was only able to experience such an overwhelming sensation of ecstasy because I have consistently, through cycling and running, subject myself to suffering over the past year. 

Suffering and ecstasy are mutual. You can separate them and you can induce the more favorable one through chemical manipulation, which is ultimately detrimental. I’ve experimented with chemical manipulation and none have even come close to the ecstasy I felt when I began to cry on that trail. The tremendous level of suffering that I have endured, purely by my own command, has increased the level of ecstasy or general contentment I feel on a day-to-day basis. It’s not something which requires escalation either. I wasn’t running a trail that even closely rivals some of my larger excursions, yet it still induced that extreme level of ecstasy, which is an indicator of a healthy activity. When you don’t need to up the dosage, no matter how long you’ve engaged in the activity, you can be sure it’s healthy. Unless you engineer stronger drugs, which will still build a tolerance rapidly in comparison to endurance.