We are Opposites

Like black and white, like a question and an answer, like plus and minus — me and you, we are opposites, attracted but always apart. And we are not alone, because the world — and the human personality — is divided into two halves, in which we are complementary to each other, and we are the opposites to each other.

The thing is, if we are nature's opposite and the opposite of nature, we cannot be united. But for us, the whole world — the world of man — is divided into two halves, which we are always fighting against, and in which we cannot forget our common enemy.

I asked you before to tell me about your conception of the relation between man and nature.

I have one: man is a creation, and nature is a creation of man.

You mean that man is the creation of the man in whom he lives.

Or, as I have said, man is the creation of the natural world.

The reason that there is a natural world is because nature is our natural enemy; it is the foe of man.

A man and a woman are the same; they are both created by nature. They are both alike in their nature. They are both alike in their minds. They are both born, in the same way, and both die, in the same way.

This is the law of nature; and when man has lived in at least one country, he has become his own master; in that country he has naturalised himself.

Like black and white, like a question and an answer, like plus and minus — me and you, we are opposites, attracted but always apart.

The way we see the world is different from the way it is seen by others. When we are doing something for which we have no money, we don't get caught up in the way others see us. We see the world as we have always seen it, but we don't view it as we would like to see it.

When we have good things to say we say them in a matter-of-fact and analytical way. We are always in a hurry. When we find something we like, we carry it with us. When we find something we don't like, we don't immediately try to fix it.

We are always conscious of our own superiority over others, by which we mean that we have more power than others. We are always conscious of the advantages we take from others, by which we mean that we have more power over them than they have over us.

We are always conscious of the advantages we take from others, by which we mean that we have more power than they have over us.

Like black and white, like a question and an answer, like plus and minus — me and you, we are opposites, attracted but always apart.

I'm looking at you, man, and I'm thinking of you, and I'm thinking of all the things you are out there. I'm thinking of the right, the wrong, and the wrong way to do things.

Maybe I'm not a woman. I'm not a man. I'm not anything in between. But I'm a man, and I'm a man who has told his wife many lies. I've told the truth plenty of times. I'm sure, perhaps, that the truth is far from the truth and that I have done some very bad things, but I don't believe that I have done them all. What befools me is that I can't help but think that you are the same. I don't know what it is about your face that makes you so attractive, but it's not that I envy you; I don't envy you at all.

I do not envy you, but I know that you are dirty.

You are dirty, you are dirty, you are dirty, and you are dirty.

You're a person to be trusted, a friend to be trusted, a brother to be trusted.

You're a person to be feared.

I'm afraid that you will be a mistake.

You will be a mistake.

I am afraid of you, but most of all I am afraid of me.

Like black and white, like a question and an answer, like plus and minus — me and you, we are opposites, attracted but always apart.

I have one more thing I want to tell you about my childhood. I was a little girl in a little house on the edge of the water. My father, who was a pastor, lived in an old church in the town, and I remember sitting close by in our room, and when I was very young I followed him into the church and sat beside him. I learned a most interesting thing there about the church. It was called The Old Family. My father had been a preacher there, and I saw him every Sunday, and he is one of the finest men I have ever known. He was a man of uncommon intelligence, and a kind and loving man, and he looked upon his wife, whom he loved dearly, as his most dear friend. While he was an active man he was always a prayerful and melancholy man, and he had nothing to say to me about secular life except that I should never let my conscience make me forget what it had done to me. When I heard that my father had died I was very surprised, for I had always thought that he had gone astray, but it seemed to me that he had been ever a good man. The doctor told me that he had been a practising Christian for several years, and that he had never forgotten his religion. After my father's death he had undergone an intense conversion, and had been banished to England for three years.

Like black and white, like a question and an answer, like plus and minus — me and you, we are opposites, attracted but always apart. We are the one and only thing between the two sides of the same coin.

But there are other ways of looking at it. There are ways that we look at the world and the human condition as a whole. There is a way that we look at ourselves and our own activities as two sides of the same coin. And there is a way in which we look at ourselves and our own lives as two sides of the same coin.

Now, I have seen the world through a lot of different lenses, and I have come to agree with most of them. I think that I was lucky enough to be born in a country where the imagination is a powerful force. And one of the things that we all do is to entertain ourselves with this world they call life. And I think that the imagination is the power that keeps us all away from the abyss, which is the abyss between dreams of heaven and the abyss between dreams of hell.

Like black and white, like a question and an answer, like plus and minus — me and you, we are opposites, attracted but always apart. We are free, but our freedom is a slave to our own fate.

Six weeks after my return, I was in the coffee shop at the University of Chicago. My friends and I were a group of curious, self-confident, if slightly awkward people, like the students who had come to Chicago after Vietnam, the leaders of the anti-Vietnam movement, the young men who had come to Chicago to study philosophy. We were all here to drink coffee and talk about politics. When I walked in, it was my first drink at the coffee shop and I was very nervous. "You're in the business of making money," I said to myself. "You're not going to sit here and drink coffee all day."

"You're in the business of making money?"

"No, I'm just a man who's out here doing his best to make money," I continued. "But you know, I'm better than most of these guys. I'm better than my instructors."

"You know that. Well," said my friend, "I'll tell you what I think."

"I think you're better than all of them," I said. Then I went out and bought a suit.

Like black and white, like a question and an answer, like plus and minus — me and you, we are opposites, attracted but always apart. The black and white of the map is a map of our surroundings — a map of the world.

But we are not alone in our place. As I write this, I am watching a set of eyes, two in a row, peering out across the landscape. They are looking at a gray, shaded patch of land, a patch of the land that has been torn away from me and my family. From the top they can see the dark, lonely, lonely black line that runs from the town of Harrisburg to the railroad.

It is a place that I don't like. I don't like the people who live in this town. I don't like my wife. I don't like the way we live here. I don't like the silver-trimmed lights that shine from the windows of our home, or the black-and-white picture of the house we painted on the front porch.

But I don't like the neighborhood.

I am a proud member of this community and I will do my best to make it as comfortable as I can.

But it feels wrong to me to live in that place, to live in a house that has been placed here for me, for my family, for my children.

I don't want to be out here on the road.

And after twenty years on the road, I'm ready to leave our home.

Like black and white, like a question and an answer, like plus and minus — me and you, we are opposites, attracted but always apart.

The opposite of this, a more open and less restrictive, is to be found in the art of treating each other as equals.

And so the very meaning of our life is to be found in the fact that it is an equality of power.

The classic observation of the modern psychologist is the statement that "we are what we know ourselves to be, and think we are what we know ourselves to be."

We say that we are what we know ourselves to be. We know ourselves to be an equal, as we say we are. We know ourselves to be an equal as we know ourselves to be, as we know ourselves to be.

The difference between us is not that we are different. It is that we are equal.

We feel ourselves to be equal when we are alike.

And so, in a word, as we examine our intellectual life, we are guided by our own instincts. Our only concern is to know what we are — and what we are not, and what we are not.

We are like the animal that, when provoked by its torment, shuts its eyes and falls into a state of frenzy. It knows no restraint, knows no restraint.

Like black and white, like a question and an answer, like plus and minus — me and you, we are opposites, attracted but always apart.

In the face of this dilemma, the great German philosopher Karl Popper, who died in 2009, sought to develop an alternative, more democratic understanding of how the world works.

The dilemma is, of course, one Popper has never faced. Yet he's become increasingly convinced that he has it wrong.

Here is his logic:

The world is a machine, a network of commodities. There are a finite number of commodities, all of which are used up. If one of the commodities is destroyed, another is brought in. The machine continues to work, and sometimes it stops working altogether.

"What do you mean by the machine" is Popper's own formulation, and he seems to have taken it as a given. It is surely true that there is an infinite number of commodities, each of which is used up. But there are plenty of commodities which are not used up, and many which are used up with great regularity.

So, for instance, there is the gold piece. It is a commodity in which there is no use. Yet it consumes much more than it produces. There is only one gold piece that is worth a dollar. It is the world's most valuable commodity.

It is not the gold piece that is used up, but the gold in which it is stored — that is, the gold which lies beneath it.

Like black and white, like a question and an answer, like plus and minus — me and you, we are opposites, attracted but always apart.

For me, as for a lot of people of my generation, the answer is, "If I were ever more in love with you, would you be in love with me? And if you were ever less in love with me, would you be more in love with me?" As far as I can see, yes, and I think you will agree with me.

In my case, I had been looking for a woman who enjoyed me for whom I had a great deal of money. I do not think I found it; and I am sure I will not find it again. But I do have a very strong feeling that I would have made a better companion had I found a better woman.

I have always been attracted to women who are good-looking and not ugly. I have never been inclined to think that I am a bad-looking man. But I have been attracted to women who are good-looking and not ugly. For a long time I had the idea that I was the only man in the world who was perfectly comfortable with a woman who had a bad attitude toward him.

But then I was encouraged to read the book of sex by a fellow-student. He was a young man who was very beautiful, and he wanted me to read it. I read it and said to myself, "I am sorry, but I was born a man."

Like black and white, like a question and an answer, like plus and minus — me and you, we are opposites, attracted but always apart. Our eyes are on the same body, our souls are alike, our passions are alike, our passions are like opposites, like twins. We are twins, and one twin is a twin.

I visited my mother once, and I found her in a state of intense melancholy as she clutched at her breast the railing of a chair, which had been folded up for her. She was a well-bred woman, in her sixties, and of a very high social standing. She had been married to an old friend of mine for twenty-five years, and had had many children. She was the most beautiful woman I had ever seen. She was a great success in her profession, and was now married to her own son.

"I am not to blame for the way I am," she said. "I am not the only one who is unhappy in my family. I have many friends, and I am always glad to hear from them. The only thing that I do not like is that I have to take my own advice, and my wife has taken her own advice. If I had been married to my own son, I would never have taken the advice of my wife. But I think it is better to be happy in my own skin than that of my wife, and that is what I am doing very well."

"I suppose you have had a very good education, and you are very well adjusted in your opinions," I said.

Like black and white, like a question and an answer, like plus and minus — me and you, we are opposites, attracted but always apart.

The only thing that separates us is our night, our nose and ears and eyelashes and our place in the world.

We are not born to be straight but to be gay, that is to say, we are born to be gay.

Walking along the streets of San Francisco I saw the same place as I had seen from the street: The homeless — the homeless, that is, not those huggable kids who cried often; the homeless, who were so often out of touch with reality that they could not see the harm in, a thing that had been done to them by a bad neighborhood.

The first time I saw a homeless man I was there with my wife, with a friend, and we were sitting by the beach. He was a tall, a man in a black flannel shirt and a black cap. We were both looking about for a place to sleep. I had seen him once before — well, sometimes he was out, but he was always a nuisance to me.

"This place is full of people," he said. "Every night, I wake up in a hurry and go to sleep on the beach. I go from one side to the other." He looked at me inquiringly. "I was smoking a cigarette, when I saw you." He turned to me with a smile. "You're a gay man."

Like black and white, like a question and an answer, like plus and minus — me and you, we are opposites, attracted but always apart. And we are so far apart, yet so close together, that we cannot be separated. We are like two but we're not two, we're in love, we're together, we're together — we're Mr. and Mrs. Lincoln, Mrs. Lincoln and I, and the millions of us they are.

What's more, the two of us have one thing in common: we both need to give up the silly ways of our lives. But we both want to run away from it. The old man remembered his friends. The old man was an old man who had a face painted and a mustache. He was a very handsome man, and he was a stranger to me.

The old man saw me once, and he said he had followed me since I was a boy. He had seen me in the days when I had been a boy, when I was myself but a boy. He was a little old man, and his voice was deep and full. He often spoke in a low, low voice, with an air of remonstrance and sarcasm. He sometimes spoke of me with what seemed to me to be a sneering kind of humour, as if he were saying, "You were once a fool, and you are now a fool."

Like black and white, like a question and an answer, like plus and minus — me and you, we are opposites, attracted but always apart.

The question that I'm asking is whether a woman who has ever been with a man of a certain age has since turned him down?

The answer is yes.

I'll tell you a story.

He was with his wife at the time, and we started off quite well. He was quick, but this was an open relationship. But he became a crackpot, and he had this weird sort of obsession with the idea that the playboy was a secret agent, that he was a member of the CIA. He wondered whether it was possible that some of the men in the office were CIA agents.

The story of my girl, of course, is that she had a boyfriend, a very smart man, who was very good looking. In the course of our affair, he became hostile to her. She had become interested in him, and she had noticed that he was a bit of a showman, and she found this repulsive.

She confronted him about it, and, in a way, he made her feel guilty about it.

But of course, the story ends there.

My girl found her own way, and she found her way to him. She became a lover of his, and she had a daughter.

Like black and white, like a question and an answer, like plus and minus — me and you, we are opposites, attracted but always apart. Nobody is more baffling, so us we are. And yet, we know what we are.

Our view of the world is a complex one, and it is often difficult to tell right from wrong, but it is the wisdom of these two that we are trying to remember. We are the essence of the universe, and we are conscious of it. The mind of an observer is a black hole. The mind of one of us is a dim light in the universe.

We are neither invisible nor conscious, yet we are both evolving.

But we're not nearly as separate as we might like to believe. The universe is a puzzle, and yet we can solve it. We are a constant variable in it, and yet we do not know why.

What to do? Would it be better to live in the one place and let others do it for us?

No, we must live in the other place, and we must live in it.

We rank each other as our friends, and yet we are both the source of our friends and the object of their scorn.

We rank each other as our enemies, and yet we both make our enemies.

We rank each other as our friends, and yet we both make our friends.

The universe is made up of things, and yet we are both in it.

Like black and white, like a question and an answer, like plus and minus — me and you, we are opposites, attracted but always apart.

Fate, as it were, holds us in its grip.

I have a gift for reading people's minds. It's like the way that the most delighted people are the ones who are the most willing to open up and to share, to talk about themselves and to find out. I think my special gift is that I can make people open up and to think about their own minds. I cannot explain how this gift works, but it is one of the great resources of the mind.

I have a strange kind of sensitivity to people's emotions. I know that people are different from one another on all sides, but I always feel that people are connected to one another in different ways. I feel that, for example, when I am with a friend or old friend, I feel the same way, that I care about him or her in the same way, that I feel the same urge to harm or to be helped.

I was once a witness to a murder committed by a member of the clergy. He was a maverick, and he had a great desire to get away from the church. He came to me and said, "I'm going to kill you." I said, "You will kill me?" He said, "Oh, I can't have you killed, for I'm a man of God." So he fell down and killed himself.