How To Live With Contradiction

Beyond Thought Let Stillness Speak

Learning how to live with contradiction is an important thinking skill because life is full of contradictions, or more accurately things that appear to be contradictory.

This is a big subject and one that is easy to get caught up in shooting the breeze with pointless philosophical speculations about the true nature and meaning of life and self-indulgent warm soapy baths of meaningless woo woo platitudes.

My purpose in this article is to show you how to live with contradiction and to provide you with some proven practical tools and resources to achieve this.

Firstly I want to define our terms, then take a brief look at the environment in which we live which will offer some clues as to how to live with contradiction and then to look at some key points that will help us understand how our brain works and how and why it struggles with contradiction, then finally to look at the tools we have and how to apply them. 

1. Definitions and Meanings
2. The Environment In Which We Live
3. How Our Brain Works And Why It Struggles With Contradiction
4. The Tools And Resources We Have And How To Apply Them

[1] How To Live With Contradiction - Definitions and Meanings

[1] Contradiction

The word contradiction is derived from the latin verb "contradicere" which literally means "to speak against".

In modern use a contradiction involves a statement that either conflicts with itself or with an established fact or, a situation in which inconsistent elements are present.

Here are a few examples:

• A law that is meant to enforce peace but uses violent means - creates a conflict between the intended outcome and the method used. 
• A country claiming to be peaceful while actively engaging in military conflict - highlights a discrepancy between the country's stated values and its actions. 
• A person claiming to be both healthy enough to attend a party but too sick to go to work - illustrates a contradiction in their stated state of well-being.
• A company that prides itself on its environmental sustainability while heavily polluting the environment - showcases a conflict between the company's image and its practices. 
• An individual who advocates for open communication while simultaneously hiding information from others -represents a contradiction in their personal behavior.

The human race is a contradictory species:

• We say one thing but do another - We make plans that we never follow through on. We want one thing but end up doing something else.
• We often deceive ourselves about our true motivations and intentions - We tell ourselves that we’re doing something for one reason, but in reality, we’re doing it for another.
• We can be selfless and loving yet hold evil intent - We can achieve great things with kindness and love, but we can also commit terrible acts.
• We can be noble and creative yet utterly destructive - We can create beautiful art to stand the test of time and cause unimaginable suffering.

Contradiction is more that just fancy wordplay. 

The biggest impact of contradiction on so many peoples' lives is situational contradiction.

This issue is universal amongst all of humanity, because the situational contradictions we are talking about are to do with unfulfilled realistic expectations. 

These can include unfulfilled:

• Reciprocal obligations - "I have done these good things for you and you have not returned the favour... "
• Familial expectations - "I expected my Father to be there for me when I was growing up..."
• Relational expectations - "I have loved you so much for all these years and you have left me..."
• Societal expectations - "I expected to be to work for the same major employer in this town as my mother and her mother before her but now these jobs have been out-sourced overseas where labour is cheaper..."
• Transitional expectations - " I thought that leaving my partner and becoming a single parent would give me a whole fresh new start but it hasn't worked out like that and I am caught in even worse drudgery than that which I left...."
• Spiritual expectations - "I have been 'a good and faithful servant' and trusted You but still after all these years You have not answered my prayers..."

[2] Paradox

Paradox is a word that is closely related to contradiction. A paradox is a statement that it appears to contain a contradiction but is constructed in such a way that it reveals or points to a higher truth.

The difference lies in the prefix to each word.

"Contra" in contradiction means against.

"Para" in paradox means beyond.

"Dox" in paradox means thought or to think.

So a modern translation of the original Greek word Paradoxon quite literally means "beyond thought".

I am rather labouring this point because this translation and usage of the word paradox provides us with an important clue as to how to live with contradiction  i.e. it's beyond thought.

Here are a few examples of paradoxical statements:

• Less is more - suggests that simplicity or a smaller quantity can be more desirable or effective. 
• The more you learn, the less you know - how learning can reveal the extent of one's ignorance.
• I can resist anything except temptation - a contradiction to emphasize the power of temptation. 
• You have to spend money to make money - the paradoxical nature of investment and risk. 
• This statement is false - a classic liar's paradox, where the statement negates itself. 
• Be cruel to be kind - actions that appear harsh or unkind can be done with the intention of benefiting someone in the long run. 
• The only constant is change - the paradoxical nature of change as a continuous and inevitable force. 

Zen koans and sutras frequently employ paradoxes to challenge conventional thinking and guide practitioners toward deeper, non-dualistic understanding.

Their aim is to bypass logical reasoning, move beyond the limitations of language and intellect by confronting the mind with contradictions - to reveal a reality that transcends rational explanation.

The Tao Te Ching is full of paradoxical statements. A more recent example is the late James Carse's Finite and Infinite Games.

[2] The Environment In Which We Live

We are brought up to understand and work within what we are taught are the rules of life.

Put simply: work hard at school and get good grades, you get into a good college or university, you get a good degree which in turn leads to a good job, you get a good job and earn good money, and this buys you a good life and so on. 

We are brought up to believe that life is complicated, and if you learn the rules and do all that you can to understand how life works,  and if you  address as many moving parts as possible, then you can achieve the outcomes that you seek.

All of this is based on classic Newtonian thinking, the mechanical universe, which is all about: predictability and clearly defined cause and effect - if you understand the part you understand the system.

We automatically lean towards this mechanistic view of life. We do our very best to understand the moving parts in life, and this in turns leads us to having expectations of how things will work out.

But unfortunately our expectations are frequently unfulfilled and we get frustrated and anxious as discover that life is full of contradictions and uncertainties.

The root cause of much of this anxiety and frustration is because we are approaching life with the wrong mindset.

Complex systems are all about the dynamics of the interactions between the multiple component parts of the system. 

A complex system, such as life, behaves very differently to the classic Newtonian mechanistic view of things.

For example, things happen as a result of the huge number of interactions of all of myriads of parts in life where all the rules of cause and effect often do not apply leading to emergent behaviour, non-linear interactions, unpredictability and uncertainty of outcomes.

All of these characteristics of complex interactions can appear in contradiction to our expectation of how we have been brought up to believe that life works.

In a complex system you gain a better understanding of what is going on by focusing on the dynamics and interactions of the parts. This is an important clue to learning how to live with contradiction and we will be looking at this in more detail in the tools and resources section below.

Here is a brief summary comparing complicated and complex systems,   and here is a graphic illustration of the key differences.

Obviously life is infinitely more complex than any one simple model and there is far more going on than we can ever hope to fully comprehend.

But we have to start somewhere, and my purpose here is twofold:

1. To expand your thinking and to provide you with a foundation for learning how to live with contradiction, by
2. Providing a simple model of how the complex system that is life works.

[3] How Our Brain Works And Why It Struggles With Contradiction

We are walking around with the same hardware as our Paleolithic ancestors and it serves two fundamental functions: survival and reproduction.

98% of our thinking is unconscious, automatic and impulsive.

This thinking uses our mammalian brain which is all about emotions and is driven by our reptilian brain which is focused on survival.

Why? Because this is the function and purpose of our amygdala otherwise known as "The Lizard Brain" which is responsible for our instinctive drives and it reacts automatically to what it sees in front of it.

Our minds are not quite designed to understand how the world works, but, rather, to get out of trouble rapidly and have progeny.

[Nassim Taleb]

Beyond these primal functions, the brain has evolved and developed more advanced functions involving conscious thought and the capacity for data processing, analysis, rationality, abstract thought and communication, but it has serious limitations.

This, together with the complex environment in which we live, is why we struggle with whole business of how to live with contradiction. 

Here is a short summary of some of the main limitations in our thinking skills:

# The Linear Scanning System Of Conscious Attention

Human intelligence has a serious limitation. It is a scanning system that is linear. It examines the world in lines, as you would pass a flashlight beam across a darkened room, focusing on one thing at a time, sequentially.

For example, to gain an education, we scan millions of lines of information.

We do it that way because that’s the best our attention can do, scanning and taking in one or at least just a few bits of information at a time, one after another.

But the kicker is that the real world doesn’t happen one thing at a time, one thing after another.

The real world is multidimensional, with a lot happening all at once, and it comes at us so fast and all at once in such a way that we could never scan it in the narrow focused linear way humans typically think.

# Thought vs Experience

The conscious mind is limited by the abstractions, concepts, beliefs and maps we make to try to make sense of the complex world we live in.

Because in so doing we confuse 'the world as-it-is' with 'the world as-it-is-thought-about-and-described'. This is often expressed as confusing the map and the territory.

We confuse our thoughts and more importantly our emotional associations with an experience – with the experience. Reality is the territory – the unfiltered, uncategorized, direct experience now in the present moment.

# The Limitations Of Language

Developing point two above further, the conscious mind is limited by the torrent of inner noise pouring from our thought stream. We are in a profound sense lost for words.

The concepts we employ, the categorizations we apply and the words we choose and use to articulate a direct experience put us in a double bind, and it is this:

For everything we gain by being able to verbalize and articulate an experience we lose an equal if not greater amount of the full meaning of that experience by the very process of articulation.

# The Limitations Of Context & Framing

The conscious mind is limited by the lost meaning in our words as they are always heard or read within a context and a framing.

What I mean to say and what you hear may not be the same thing.

# Dogmas And Beliefs

The conscious mind is limited by the beliefs it holds and the dogmas that it adheres to.

# Hikjacking

The conscious mind is also limited in other ways it because it gets hijacked - here are some of the ways your brain gets hijacked.

The primal part of our brain want us to feel safe and secure and here we are constantly playing catch up as we revise and stretch our inner maps of reality to try to figure out how to live with contradiction and all the uncertainty that comes with it. 

Our deep seated fear of uncertainty and it's grip on our sense of self and well being is extraordinarily tight.

Psychologist Dorothy Rowe in "Beyond Fear" has nailed it: 

[4] The Tools And Resources We Have And How To Apply Them

Given the complex and confusing environment in which we live, and taking on board the limitations of our mental hardware and software how do we pull all this together, what tools and resources do we have for learning how to live with contradiction?

The operative word in that last sentence is "learning".

In our natural state we are at the mercy of our primal brain. It can be successfully countered, but that in involves conscious effort and hard work to form new habits of behaviour and thinking.

So what we have got? As a simple model we can think of 3 mental modalities that we have at our disposal:

1. Reactive Mind - primal instintual brain
2. Attentive Mind - conscious and programmed unconscious minds
3. Reflective Mind - not thinking mind of consciousness

The reactive mind is the source of your problems but, with conscious effort from your attentive mind you can change some of your "mental software" and reprogramme your responses to the noise from your primal brain.

You do this by adopting constructive attitudes towards how to live with contradiction, and making these mindsets into habits.

Undertaking this work is an important foundation for the work of the reflective mind.

When you engage with your reflective mind you are stepping back from the constant chatter of your reactive and attentive minds - you stop thinking - and you let the stillness speak.

Constructive Mindsets For Dealing With Situational Contradiction

I recommend that you adopt these mindsets and make them habits: 

[1] Develop"Negative Capability"

The phrase "negative capability" was first coined by the poet John Keats. 

It means having the mental strength and flexibility to hold a number of contradictory ideas in your mind at the same time.

This is a challenge because your brain is hardwired to seek certainty and it will do everything it can to create a story that will give you that certainty and it will see cause and effect where there is none.

Celebrated blogger Ryan Holiday sums it up rather well: 

The world is complicated, ambiguous, paradoxical, and contradictory.

To make sense of it, to survive it, you must be able to balance conflicting ideas.

[2] Wear Your Beliefs Lightly

A belief is something that you accept and believe to be true.

That you believe it to be true does not necessarily mean that it is true.

This is most applicable to conditioned beliefs, which are the thinking patterns developed at a young age and are based on the beliefs of your primary care-givers. Some of these beliefs can be unconscious.

These conditioned beliefs become the foundation for your future beliefs and form the basis of your decision-making and problem-solving.

We often hold our beliefs as though they are an immutable certainty.

But I have found it helpful to follow the Buddha's advice and regard beliefs as a guidance as there to serve a purpose, and to be released when that purpose is served.

Don't get stuck with your pre-conditioned beliefs - if they are not helping you - let them go!

[3] Embrace Anomalies

An anomaly is a deviation from what is expected or commonly regarded as the norm. It often appears as an unexpected observation that defies conventional wisdom or established theories.

It is frequently regarded as an abberation, a nuisance or an inconvenient interruption to a long cherished assumption.

As Warren Buffett said: "What the human being is best at is interpreting all new information so that their prior conclusions remain intact."

But there is incredible value in disconfirming evidence.

Two fundamental reasons why you should embrace anomalies are:

1. The identification of new and unrecognised opportunities.
2. The avoidance of ignored risk and disaster.

Pay special attention to collecting facts which do not agree with your current beliefs and understanding.

[4] Use The Power Of Framing

Framing is about communication and how you create meaning in your communications. This can be in your communications with others, and more importantly in your internal communication with yourself.

How you mentally characterize a situation has a profound impact on how you respond to it emotionally.

The choices of words that you use have power because of the underlying emotional associations that they invoke and the actions that result from those associations.

This applies as much to your inner dialogue as it does to the words we use in everyday speech.

Self talk is the generic term used to describe the inner voices and scripts that run in the background of our minds and that have a frightening degree of control over what we think, say and do.

Positive self talk is the inner narrative that we run in the back of our mind that is affirming and runs counter to the ingrained negative self talk that we all experience.

This is critical to countering the noise generated by your primal brain.

Change the language of your self-talk to change your results.

[5] Experience The Transformative Power Of Acceptance

The transformative power of acceptance is a simple yet extremely powerful mindfulness practise that will release you from the powerful hold of the negative emotions associated with the fear of uncertainty, and it will free you to respond to life in a more flexible way.

Just sit quietly for a moment, take a deep breath and observe the feelings and emotions and thoughts that are associated with your fears.

Follow these brief and simple steps and your fears will disappear, and you will feel calm, centred and ready to do what you need to do.

Do not be deceived by the simplicity of these steps, they are very powerful. They work.

If you feel any kind of resistance to doing this - just do it anyway and see what happens. As the psychologist Dorothy Rowe has said:

The only way to cope with all this uncertainty is to accept that it is so.

Engage With Your Reflective Mind And Let Stillness Speak

To engage with your reflective mind and let stillness speak is about stepping back from the constant chatter of your brain and allowing a deeper, quieter presence to communicate.

This is not about some woolly, fuzzy, feel-good vibe. This is about accessing a consciousness that lies deep within you - far deeper than thought.

This consciousness:

• Expresses itself when you are fully present.
• Frees you from the suffering we all inflict on ourselves and each other with our delusions and our dogmas.
• Sits behind your thought-stream that has such momentum and that drags you along in its wake, deluding you that every thought matters so much, as it constantly updates your narrative of "my life".
• Transforms how you think and act.
• Is the very essence of who you are.

In the major faith traditions this consciousness is referred to as the Christ within, the Buddha nature, Atman in Hindu and Fitra in Islam.

To let stlllness speak is to learn it's first major lesson: you are not your thoughts.

Here are some actions and supporting practices to help you access this stillness and let it speak in your life.

If you get stuck just ask.

Closing Reflection On How To Live With Contradiction

Return from: "How To Live With Contradiction" to: Walking The Talk

Next Article:

Trust The Process - Beyond The Cliche

Contact me