On 22-02-2022, a day I not-so-fondly decreed ‘Duality Day’ due to the number of 2s in the date, I have indeed been mentally duelling duality. (I’ve never really liked the number two.) In the last month, I’ve watched instances of ‘opposition or contrast between two concepts or two aspects of something’ devolve from blatant to flagrant. Watching events in Canada play out on the world stage has felt like watching a duel—and we know those never end well. As I related in another GRIT Series post, it has required that I and You’ve Got GRIT.

In my Seven Universal Laws course, we explore the Law of Polarity (actually, it’s my favourite law). It’s a complicated law—too complicated to explore fully here (register for my course and we’ll explore it fully together!). Embodied by the yin-yang symbol that represents dark-light, negative-positive, this law states that opposites are identical in nature, but different in degree. For instance, hot and cold are merely degrees of temperature—it is impossible to say exactly where “hot” ends and “cold” begins.

Duality and polarity are closely related; I’ve been contemplating the difference between them. In Chinese philosophy, the yin-yang symbol represents dark-light, negative-positive, which appears to speak to duality; however, the shape of the symbol itself demonstrates how apparently opposite or contrary forces intertwine within one whole (the circle)—they are interconnected.

Yin: passive female principle, characterized as sustaining, associated with earth, cold, and dark.
Yang: active male principle, characterized as creative, associated with heaven, heat, and light.

As stated in the Law of Polarity, they are indeed polar, not dual—being, in fact, complementary and interdependent, as represented by the dots within each side. Within the cold, always exists some hot; within the evil, always exists some good.

Why, then, is mentally duelling duality dangerous? Because we fall into it when we forget the interconnectedness of all things—we lose sight of the circle and see only two parallel lines, forever separate. Yet, humans easily fall into dualistic thinking. Here’s how I did.

For better or for worse, I tuned into the Canadian trucker protest more than I typically tune into current events—both energetically and mentally. I expressed my thoughts about the energies associated with the protest in my Grinding to a Halt post.

Mentally, I watched both raw footage and news coverage of the trucker convoy and protest. This exercise alone felt like duelling duality—it required significant GRIT. The disparity between coverage by the Canadian media versus coverage by media outside Canada shocked me (yet again). Several of my close international friends sent me links to videos that shone a bright light on the Canadian truckers, calling them freedom fighters, and positive examples that other countries aspired to follow. I also received personal video footage directly from Canadian friends who joined the Ottawa protest—friends who called it a “Protestival”—smiling, dancing, in a crowded scene that looked very much like Canada Day.

In direct opposition, I listened to government officials and the media refer to what appeared to me as a very peaceful protest as an ‘unlawful occupation’ and ‘siege,’ stating that they were ‘losing the battle’ for control and required additional ‘forces.’ As noted in my other post, as a student of rhetoric—the art of persuasion—I believe that the words we choose matter. These choice of words—words typically used in reference to invasion by a foreign power—appeared to have been selected for a purpose that disturbed me greatly. They speak to war, not peace, and they paved the way for enacting the Emergencies Act, formerly the War Measures Act, a federal law that gave the Canadian government additional powers during times of “war, invasion, and insurrection, real or apprehended”—an act historically enacted only when the security of the entire country is threatened by a foreign power.

In response, the truckers encouraged one another to “hold the line”—a phrase historically associated with military tactics, in which a line of soldiers defends a geographically strategic position against an enemy breakthrough.

For my own comfort, I reviewed the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms:

PART I

Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms

Whereas Canada is founded upon principles that recognize the supremacy of God and the rule of law:

Guarantee of Rights and Freedoms

1 The Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms guarantees the rights and freedoms set out in it subject only to such reasonable limits prescribed by law as can be demonstrably justified in a free and democratic society.

Fundamental Freedoms

2 Everyone has the following fundamental freedoms:

(a) freedom of conscience and religion;

(b) freedom of thought, belief, opinion and expression, including freedom of the press and other media of communication;

(c) freedom of peaceful assembly; and

(d) freedom of association.

Again, as I discussed in my You’ve Got GRIT post, I applied Kenneth Burke’s Theory of Identification and the Scapegoat to the circumstances playing out around me; this theory states that people seek safety and identification based on coming together in opposition to a common enemy—this chosen enemy becomes the scapegoat for the group’s ills and grievances. Historically, we witnessed this theory play out in WWII when Hitler chose Jewish people as his scapegoat. But that would never happen today, right?

noun: scapegoat

1. a person who is blamed for the wrongdoings, mistakes, or faults of others, especially for reasons of expediency.
2. (in the Bible) a goat sent into the wilderness after the Jewish chief priest had symbolically laid the sins of the people upon it (Leviticus 16).

Creating a scapegoat requires reducing complex dynamics, situations, and arguments into simple, dualistic ones—a ‘black or white decision’—it’s either right or wrong, good or evil, dark or light, easy or hard, all or nothing. As humans struggling to find our way in the world around us, we naturally gravitate toward these clear divisions because they simplify decision-making and help us to ‘fit’ in.

Advertising plays upon this human desire by reducing complex ideas to dualistic ones. Advertisements create emotional or psychological discomfort or imbalance and then present the solution for correcting that imbalance; they create the fear that I have a bad problem, and then resolve the fear of that problem with a good product. The problem (which I may not have been aware I had until I watched the commercial) is bad; therefore, the product, which solves the problem, must necessarily be good. But, it’s a false argument—a false association. First, what if I don’t actually have the problem in the first place? Second, if I actually do have the problem, will the product necessarily solve it? The fact that the problem is bad, does not necessarily mean that the solution offered is good.

We can see this simplification into duality all around us. In sports, we choose a team and become emotionally invested in their success. In politics, we draw a stark line between liberal or conservative, democrat or republican. Through the pandemic, anyone who has questioned the safety of the Covid shot has been labelled an ‘anti-vaxxer;’ they are ‘bad’ because they disobey authority, and that disobedience endangers the group. But, does that make them evil? Well, it does if, in the words of my own Prime Minister, “They are extremists who don’t believe in science, they’re often misogynists, also often racists….” Misogynists and racists are not just bad, they’re really bad, maybe even evil. And voila—guilt by association—we have a scapegoat.

And then the PM applied the same guilt by association to the truckers—first, he labelled them as ‘anti-vaxxers,’ even though the leaders have clearly stated that they are protesting the mandate, not the shots; then, he intimated that they are white supremacists funded by terrorists. So, when the Canadian federal government enacts the Emergencies Act and uses it to threaten the livelihoods of these people by confiscating their vehicles, cancelling their insurance, and seizing the money in their business and personal bank accounts, and arresting them without bail, we’re okay with it…because they’re evil outliers. And then, when the government uses this opportunity to permanently increase their absolute powers, we simply accept it. The Emergencies Act and these new powers would never be used against us…because we’re in the group…right?

I experienced this duality personally when I received a threatening email. Why would I receive such an email? Because one of my website clients attended the Ottawa protest with his business-branded truck and the footer of his website displays my business name and link with ‘website by.’ He’s been my client for over a decade; his political views have always been completely irrelevant to, and outside the realm of, our business relationship. Yet, someone with the last name ‘Frank’ (assumedly using a false name and temporary gmail account) emailed me to warn me that “anti-science = no business.” A stranger believed they were justified in threatening my ability to make a living simply based on my association with him. 

When I next spoke to my client, he related openly that he went to Ottawa with his work trailer fully stocked with supplies to offer support to the truckers—he organized garbage removal, set up a free food table, and cooked burgers for anyone who wanted one, protestor, trucker, tourist, or resident—but not a white supremacist or anyone carrying a Nazi flag because he didn’t actually see any of those. He also told me how frustrated he felt watching a mainstream media reporter purposefully position herself in front of the pile of black garbage bags they were in the process of collecting and removing, to report on the ‘mounting garbage crisis’ being created by the protestors. I interpreted my client’s actions in Ottawa as peaceful and positive; I cannot say the same for that reporter or the person who emailed me.

I watched press conferences with the leaders of the Freedom Convoy, who spoke calmly and respectfully of the right for peaceful protest and the desire for open dialogue with our leaders—leaders who adamantly refused to speak with them, choosing to retreat from Ottawa instead. (Yes, I chose the word ‘retreat’ purposefully here.) The Freedom Convoy leaders included Tamara Lich, a petite, female mother and grandmother, musician and recent activist of Métis heritage from Medicine Hat—they arrested her and denied her bail instead. 

At the same time, watching the leader of my country in live legislative debate through this conflict, quite frankly, disgusted me. His offensive language, his outright disrespect toward other members of parliament, and his adamant, downright rude refusal to even acknowledge, never mind answer, the important, relevant questions asked by the opposition, all horrified me. And stranger still, he acted like a puppet, incapable of actually responding to questions in his own words, instead repeating the same scripted response over and over, regardless of whether or not it actually fit the situation. 

Watching my Prime Minister in parliament, I felt embarrassed to be Canadian. And when I watched international media channels call him out for the same transgressions, I felt ashamed that I had previously highly respected my Canadian Prime Minister. And I realized, again to my own shame, that I hadn’t respected him based on sincere investigation—in fact, I hadn’t respected him at all, I had idolized the idea of him, based on nostalgia for his father who led Canada as I was coming of age. The reality of this leader’s choice of words and actions has departed radically from my idealized, mythical persona of him—an archetype, not a person. Shame on me for forming an opinion based on emotionally-driven idealism rather than real insight.

I had reduced a complex political decision down to choosing simply based on who I identified as the ‘golden boy,’ ‘the ‘good guy’—a dualistic decision. And I now see so many decisions I made in the past from a place of simplified duality. I fully believed that one political wing was always good and the other bad; one news outlet consistently reliable and the other inconsistent and unreliable; some countries had the best interests of people at heart and others were against them. ‘Informed’ people agreed and anyone who disagreed was…misguided. Why? Because staying on the surface and picking a consistent side was way easier than digging deeply into the nitty-gritty details, critically assessing them, and independently deciding upon each one. 

But, over the last few years, I have met more people whose opinions depart from these black-and-white assumptions. And I continue to see more and more examples that contradict my previous assumptions. The more blatant examples I see, and the more willing I become to listen to multiple opinions openly and without prejudice, the more I realize that people and situations are far too complex, far too multifaceted and vibrantly coloured to be broken down into stark black-and-white dualities.

In the dualistic perspective, two people may believe that they are standing at opposite ends of a straight line (perhaps preparing to draw their pistols in a duel), until we introduce a third perspective who rises high above them to see the whole picture—the line is actually a circle—and, if the two people walk far enough along it in opposite directions, they will eventually meet. From the dualistic perspective, all truths are but half-truths. But, from a higher perspective, everything is interconnected—the poles are neutralized. In this way, all paradoxes may be reconciled. This is the universal Law of Polarity.

The trucker protest has quickly dissolved into the background. Now, I am watching the same dualistic over-simplification play out within the Russia-Ukraine crisis. But, I’ve learned—it’s not black and white—it is a complicated, deeply-rooted situation based on very complex and likely subversive dynamics that are extremely difficult to ascertain because the messages we are receiving about it are being purposefully managed to manipulate us into blindly choosing a side. I will not. Yet again, I find myself declining to do what I’m told. So be it.

The trucker protest, and my government’s response to it, reminded me to accept negative emotions and to allow them to move through me rather than resisting them until they come Grinding to a Halt and get stuck. This experience has also reminded me (yet again) to rise above the dualistic playing field high enough to become the third-person observer who is able to see the situation differently, and to find neutrality knowing that we are all connected.