[April 1st, 2011] Do we always need Yang?

[winkio]

Do things always have to exist with their opposites?  Does the creation of wealth also create poverty?  Does the happiness of one person cause the sadness of another?

[ForeverZer0]

In that case, I believe the answer is entirely your perspective.  For instance, what you or I think of wealth or happiness can be two entirely different things, same as one person being happy does not cause another to be sad. These are all things that each person as their own unique definition for, and only they can judge. I cannot tell someone that they are happy because in my mind their sadness is less than my own. How does one measure such things? There is no gauge that I can hold up to determine interpreted viewpoints on things, nor even put them on level playing field.

A person's state of mind determines these things, and are entirely unique to each person. While one man may judge happiness by the amount of things he owns, another may judge his by the depth of his relationships with others. While I personally don't believe that objects can grant true happiness, who am I to determine this for another? The point is that I cannot, so how can I proceed to compare or say that his happiness with his "things" can be gauged against anothers happiness with people? Although the same, they are not even comparable.

[winkio]

*facepalm* whatever, I don't care any more.  Feel free to discuss what you want in this topic.

[ForeverZer0]

Fine then. Let's talk about kittens.

You act as if my last post was not relevant to your question before it. You criticize every post as if its is just that we are not enlightened enough to understand the higher thought of the question. I understand it your question entirely, and I think its absurd. Why the hell would the happiness of one person effect the sadness in another? They are not comparable, tangible objects for one to determine.

Does your amusement level affect by level of boredom?
How does this make sense? That is the same as the question you asked. I would love for you to come down to my lower-level of intelligence and explain that, since I am apparently unable to understand such high-level logic.

[winkio]

I know you really want to play this game with me right now, but it's really not worth it on this occasion.  Let's just say that I am a complete idiot and you all are super-geniuses and leave it at that, alright?  Allow me to bow out gracefully.

[AliveDrive]

Does your amusement level affect by level of boredom?

I had a theory once.

That this type of thing is true.

And that one person may experience great joy while the other suffers.

What a sadist thought process no?

[WhiteRose]

Does your amusement level affect by level of boredom?

I had a theory once.

That this type of thing is true.

And that one person may experience great joy while the other suffers.

What a sadist thought process no?

The spacing of your post made me think for a minute that it was a poem.

</completely off topic>

[Ryex]

Wait just a minute. your completely missing the point of the first post. I understand it but if I'm wrong please correct me winko.

Ying and Yang is about balance there is good in the bad and bad in the good and it all balances out.  however we as humans seem to strive for the Ying and for the most part shun Yang and try to avoid it in our lives.  Ying and Yang claim that we need both. but as Winko has observed we seem to survive and thrive quite well on only small amounts of Yang.

[Blizzard]

Yin*

I don't think that something can really exist without its opposite. Sure, there are things like time, mass and absolute temperature that don't really have an opposite. But then again those aren't concrete things. Time itself is past and future, it is a word for two opposites where present is a turnpoint, the zero value between past and future. Same for mass. You can have less mass or more mass.
Or maybe I am wrong and there are opposites of those. Maybe this is why we still don't understand time and mass so well yet. We haven't discovered their opposites.

[winkio]

Oh awesome, so as soon as I leave the thread, we go right back on topic.  I'll just chalk it up to discrimination and leave it at that.

@Blizz: Opposites aren't always as clean as you make them out to be, especially when dealing with squared values like temperature.  To make something have negative temperature, it would need to have a complex velocity, which is completely meaningless in the real world.  It's not as simple as saying "oh, there's temperature, so there must be anti-temperature".  The implications of opposites can cause some really dumb things in some cases.

Also, the idea that everything must have an opposite is a childish way of trying to understand something.  Instead, you should think "what are the implications of this thing having an opposite."

Finally, going back to this:

Do things always have to exist with their opposites?  Does the creation of wealth also create poverty?  Does the happiness of one person cause the sadness of another?

I disagree with these assumptions.  Mutual benefits can and do occur where both parties are wealthier or happier at no cost to either.  The point of this is that some people try to justify their actions by their results, or their results by their actions.  This is wrong - both the actions and the results are important, not just one or the other.

[Blizzard]

I agree, both process and the result are important. I would never go for a result if in the process I would have to turn my back on my principles.

I was talking about something not being able to exist without its opposite. One thing defines its opposite. I'm not saying that two people can't be happier together without somebody having to live a bad life, I am saying that opposites have to exist in some form in order to be even recognizable. If everything was white and all you have ever seen in your life was white, how would you know it is white? There has never been anything else than white, you don't even realize white exists. Of course, we humans probably did notice some things that we don't know the opposite of. But people tend to keep looking for the opposite. IMO anti-mass is kind of stupid. It does make sense if there is anti-matter with normal mass, but anti-mass sounds just stupid.

[The Niche]

I remember hearing a story about a fish asking another fish what the water was like in his position. The other fish replied with: "What's water?"

But I'm still not sure about this. Because, how do we know what air is? Is it because we live at the bottom of it where there's two examples of not-air?

[winkio]

How did we discover gravity if we had never experienced anything else?

[The Niche]

Because of the apple...so...it takes a different kind of logic, combined with an unusual event to make these things apparent.

Note: I use the word unusual for lack of a more appropriate one. By nature of the thing, the event cannot be unusual.

[Blizzard]

How did we discover gravity if we had never experienced anything else?

Because we are sentient beings and sometimes we figure out some stuff without having to know the opposite.

[The Niche]

It's the absolutes again...

[Ryex]

there it is again. the black and white analogy. why are people so insistent in seeing the world in black and white? or even shades of gray? just because the ideas of Good and evil exist dose not mean that everything is somewhere in that spectrum. We exist in a colorful world and there is an infinite number of colors between the 390nm and 750nm wavelengths that make up the visible spectrum. there are not just two absolute opposites to everything, the white and black argument is a false dichotomy.

[Blizzard]

I thought we already made that clear. They are NOT absolutes! They are EXTREMES! An extreme is different than an absolute. Geez! Seriously, man. Read before you post.

[Aqua]

-posts before I read all of thread-

The original concept of Yin and Yang was not about opposites forces fighting to overcome they other, but rather complementary forces that work together to make a whole.

And also, you guys have the concept of which part "us humans" tend to strive to achieve.
For the West, people tend to go for Yang, which is the more aggressive, powerful, and firm one.
While the people of the East tend to go for Yin, which is the more passive, gentle, and fluid one.

Another point I saw and would like to clarify.
From a total Taoist perspective, there really is no "good" and "bad."
Who knows what is good and who knows what is bad?
It is relative.

[G_G]

I agree with Blizzard. Basically you are all fags.