Opposition is Existence

[bmcnicho]

I’ve noticed that the only way to describe something is in terms of other things.  For example, something that’s bright is brighter than something that’s dark, something large is larger than something small, etc.

I’m wondering if things then have any qualities in themselves, or if quality is just a relative way to draw distinctions.  Maybe in itself each object is infinite or nothing or one with infinity/emptiness 

I remember as a child that I only felt like I had a significant identity when I was being oppositional in some way, whether to a parent or a teacher or to a cultural expectation.  Maybe that’s why to this day I despise the idea of conformity, because I know that the ego only exists to the extent it can declare itself separate from something else 

Like everything we do seems to be defined by our limitations.  We eat because we lack sufficient nutrition, we socialize when we’re lonely, we entertain ourselves when we’re bored, we even develop a life purpose because we perceive some problem in the world.  If there were no problems, we lacked nothing, and had no limitations, then what would we be and what would we do?

I guess in some sense things are defined against their opposites.  You could even say paradoxically that things are what they are not

[Sahil Pandit]

@bmcnicho This is a massive insight man! Nice work.

An idea that i have been chewing on lately is "What is Language?" 

It has a lot to do with what you are talking about in the post above, and Leo talks about it here: