On Pestles and Mortars

If we try to crack a pepper with the pestle without the hard surface of the mortar we wouldn't get very far. Though the pestle is the tool we hold in our hand, and direct it where we wish, it is only effective in conjunction with the mortar - which provides the passive but rock-solid surface to press. Though we might be apt to view the pestle as the active indispensable tool, we forget that the pestle is useless without the passive backdrop of the mortar. When asked what crushed the pepper, we would be correct to view the crushing as achieved by the pestle and mortar equally and in conjunction - despite our sense that that pestle is doing more of the crushing.

Conceptual thought works in the same way. We cannot think about any aspect of reality unless we also have the concept of what it is not. We would gain nothing by calling the grass green if we did not have the concept of 'things that are not green'. Without this second concept 'green' would be a meaningless synonym of grass. So every time a feature of reality needs to be conceptualised, two concepts are invoked: that pertaining to what it is and that pertaining to what it isn't. Like the pestle, we are rather prone to placing the positive signifier higher than the negative one. We are rather prone to thinking that the positive signifier is doing more of the work, of being somehow more characteristic of that feature of reality than the negative. This is an error. For everything we perceive we must conceptualise it in terms of what it isn't in conjunction with what it is. Every blade of grass that gives rise to the concept green is also giving rise to the concept not-green - it can be no other way. If something is green then that something is also not-green.

Often we only become aware of this when asked to actually pinpoint the difference between green and not-green. What we take to be very clear and obvious we find to be much more complicated. We find that our green segues naturally into something that isn't green, and furthermore, we can never seem to agree with others whether something is or isn't green. We find ourselevs thinking of the strength of the pestle, and then get frustrated when someone reminds us that it is nothing without the mortar.

P and not-P are distinct only in logic. Try and apply the concept P to reality and you will find yourself applying not-P at the same time, every time. Like a boy trying to escape his shadow, we must learn that he and his shadow are the same. We must learn that Reality is as whole as the peppercorn - and we break it up only in our imaginations.