Wednesday, April 7, 2010

It's Black & White

Our entire lives are built around one main concept - opposites not only attract they are essential.  They're just not always attractive. 

When you think about it there is nothing we know that can be defined without its negative version.  Naturally there are degrees of negativity but without the downside there can be no upside! 

We use opposites in humor to show the absurd much as the "Push me pull me" of "Dr. Doolittle" done did.

We must know both sides of a coin to determine which is heads before flipping the darn thing.  And when we do flip the coin we have a winner and a loser!
And speaking of coins money is very much a creature of opposites. For example note the statement: "I've been rich and I've been poor - Rich is better."

The lowdown on the high up is that without the sky above we do not know what the ground beneath is.

But there is a caveat and that is the negative-positive balance does not occur within any one individual.  Just as one man's meat is another's potato (or as Mr. Quayle would say, Potatoe) if you are sad the odds are somewhere someone else is happy as a result.

That sounds mean but it is a fact nevertheless.  You may never know that mean person who thrills at your misfortune and lives by the rule of schadenfreude but he's out there.

Make your own list of pairs such as dark & light; fat & thin; in & out.  It is almost endless.

They say that the economy is bouncing back.
That means it was down and now it's heading up.
That's good, right?

And yet there are still millions of people unemployed or underemployed and more joining their ranks all the time.

In order for big business to make money an easy way is to get more from less.
Computer Associates' CEO Bill McCracken said that his objective is "Profitable growth."  The company, CA is going to do well and he is smiling, if not all the way to the bank then certainly part of the way.

He announced that part of his plan to make and keep more money is to lay off one thousand more workers.  (By the way for anyone interested in such things 'Senator Pothole' himself Alfonse D Amato is a director on the board of CA.)
So hip hip hooray for good old CA!  The stock should do quite well.  Of course the newly unemployed may not reap any of the benefits but...

CA is not the only bad guy which of course begs the question, who are the good guys?

Sadly there are less and less these days as everyone is trying to grab the brass ring.

Banks are making more money.  Obviously if they get more then someone else has less.  Well if you are not a ban then you are the 'someone else on which they feed!'

The fact there are 'haves' and 'have nots' in our world is nothing new.

It is what Nature expects.

It is the survival of the fittest over the lives of the lesser so.

Darwin was right in that respect.

But even he has his opposites.  After all what is intelligence without ignorance?
  
Proof of this last statement can be seen in various State legislatures such as Texas and Virginia and on the aptly named boob tube station known as Fox.

So don't ignore that which annoys.  You must embrace it as a necessary evil to live.

And if you do then by definition you are good!

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