Binary Dichotomus Dichotomy and/or the Golden Mean

So there you have it. In life, which in all likelihood is an invention of the West, yet again, we have this binary "either this" or "that" take on almost everything.

East versus West. Male versus female. Boss versus worker. Teacher versus student. Foreign versus local. Nature versus nurture. Rich versus poor. Old versus young. Religion versus religion. North versus south. In short, Us versus them.

The notion of one being true and the other false intensifies till one is obliterated while the other stands victorious.

Rudyard Kipling, Nobel laureate for literature sums this opposable force thus: "East is East. West is West. Never the twain shall meet." He also gave us memorable literature such as the Jungle Books.

Nevertheless, despite all that competition and pitting of one against the other, you will have noticed my surreptitious insertion of the "and/or Golden Mean". If we just replace each and every one of the preceding with "and", it would turn out to be a co-operative and beneficial enterprise.

So this "and" rather than "or" or "versus" turns a contentious dichotomy into the Middle of the Road (our Singaporean version) or Middle Way (Eastern concept) proposition, the West's Golden Mean (courtesy of Phidias the Athenian sculptor who is credited with the building of the Parthenon).

What this means is that the best ingredients of both are taken to make a broth of potent mutualism . After all, each is unique and has a life all its own.

If we must trace its roots, it started first with Hegel and his dialecticism. It goes something like a debator proposing a thesis, his opponent parries with a counter-thesis and the judicature probably in delivering the final verdict will come up with a synthesis.

Of course, Karl Marx and Friedrich Engel took this and turned it on its head somewhat with their dialectical materialism. Lenin added it on to make it Lenin-Marixism. By the time it filtered down to Stalin, it was way off its original intent and rightly named Stalinism.

That was the West conception by the way.

For the East, very much mimicking the Taoist Dao, it was change, contradiction then holism, moving in a circular motion as a wheel of fortune would. For Easterners, the opposite of a great truth can be equally true.

Merging the two will effect two "before" and "after" scenes of the battle of the sexes thus:

Before

King Tut :(furiously heeling chariot's horses) Come on asshole! I am gonna race you to the finish line! Come on! (gnashing teeth as he says this)

Queen Nefertiti:(riding on other chariot) Tut....don't go so fast... watch out for that .....(stops in the middle of her sentence and watches Tut's chariot overturning and Tut somersaulting into the air) ...hump on the road..Duh!

Which could possibly explain Tut's broken ribs.

After

Tut and Nefertiti, on same chariot together, with Nefertiti reining and stirupping the horses.

Or this other scene of East and West when Bush captured Sodom. They actually had "someone" in common.

Sodom: (Showing family portrait of 2 moustachioed sons and slutty wife in Arabian gown) Bush, look at my family album. You must let them go. They are my source of pride and joy.

Bush: (Brandishing his album in turn) Nah. Look at mine. They are better!(Album shows two daughters and same slutty wife in Arabian gown)

Therefore in diverse humankindship, there do exist commonality and crossing over.

In the old days, educators thought they had the upperhand in all teacher-pupil relationship. But with the advent of the Internet and many other telecommunicative and research facilities , this can no longer be a truism.

So instead of drawing a line and adopting a distinctive disciplinarian, combative, hierarchical stance, the daily "battle of wits and supremacy" must cease.

Similarly bosses must take the same enlightened route. You no longer own the life of your staff any more than you own a mortgaged property, technically.

Christian reformists and Catholics can do the same. Their focal point will be Jesus as the Anointed One whom both can relate to. Likewise, Islam's Prophet Mohammed and in fact Islamism itself stems from the same Abrahamic roots like the Jews.

The battle cry of the sexes should also not be heard as an "either or" combat line but as the two dots dotting the Yin-yang elements within each of the symbol. The Animus and Anima enigma if you will.

Thus today the man may dress himself in stockings and a pinafore while the next day the woman will be in pant suits. There is no more distinction in the gender germ line.

On a closing note , just so to illustrate the bridge to span the French and British continentals, I will leave you with an anecdote about Napoleon and his English counterpart.

English sovereign: (towering over Nap's bald pate) Jolly good fella. I am actually taller than you. Brittania lives in eternity (in old Britisher accent).

Napoleon : (feeling his pate with one hand and the other in breech pockets) Juis Ce'sn Nui Ote de mon de (which when translated goes: Yeah but I am sure gonna kick your ass at Waterloo to make up for my inferiority complex)

Who says Man ever learn sometimes? Duh.