Aristotle’s logical legacy dooms us all. If we let it.
It is the Law of the Excluded Middle, which states that either a proposition is true, or its negation is true. You cannot have A, and not-A. As most hopefully know, this is not a law, but a rhetorical canard used by all media to control our thought.
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In eastern traditions there are actually schools of what is called four-cornered logic, not the binary form of the rationalists. Nagarjuna is a famous Buddhist who actually used this apparently contradictory logic as a path to enlightenment. In 2010 I gave a talk to a Steinerian group in Sydney Australia, trying to convey its spiritual importance.
Parmenides wrote a poem. And in this poem he descends to the underworld. He is greeted by a goddess who is unnamed in the poem, but whom you can tell from the artifacts of the poem is Persephone—the goddess of the underworld. She not only gives him the gift of logic, but also gives him the gift of being as one. One, eternal, undivided, beginningless and endless. And logic initially, for Parmenides, as the goddess gave it to him, was a way to get back to oneness, a way to get from the confusing multiplicity of the world back into oneness. This is her gift to us that we have forgotten how to use. You can still see this in certain Buddhist logicians like Nagarjuna, for whom logic is actually used as a tool to cut through all illusory nature to get to the real.
Aristotelian logic—admittedly not my wheelhouse—states that there is A, and everything else is not-A. Or, A is not B. In other words, logic serves to show separation, discreteness. Eastern logic is very different. They have what is called the ‘four-cornered pillow of negation’.1 They agree that A is not B; also, A is B; then, neither A nor B; and then neither not A nor not B. Something like that. The point is that all these possibilities exist. For instance, my lovely wife Krys and I are not each other, yet on the soul level we are the same, sharing the same ground of being, and in another sense ‘Krys’ and ‘Steve’ are mere fictions and neither truly exist as entities.
I will try to give you another example from the Greek, as I understand things. Parmenides had a student, Xeno. You have heard of Xeno’s paradoxes. Here’s a quick demonstration: if I want to cross this room, I have to pass the halfway point. And then, once I reach this halfway point, I have to cross another halfway point. And so forth and so on. So, I can’t cross the room, always finding halfway points. Once you get into Aristotle and his ilk in later ages, they don’t understand that this is a logic that shows you the illusionary notion of distance, of separation. So this is how people like Xeno and Parmenides used logic to show that everything is one. Does that make any sense at all? It is a point that not too many people make, I think. Xeno and Parmenides are mystics, they are not devising little thought experiments to amuse themselves. True mysticism is practical.2
Parmenides in Raphael’s School of Athens, with the last philosopher, the tragic Hypathia, looking at the camera obscura.
Of course the media breaks its own rational ethos by terming everyone that does not agree with their cia bosses ‘Hitler’. Really, to the point of meaninglessness. Maybe 100 years from now, to call someone a ‘Cheney’ will have some vilify-able punch. But since you can only have one ‘Hitler’ (luckily), and everyone else is a ‘not-Hitler’, is it a fallacy when you equate someone with Hitler.
The big takeaway for us has the legacy of Aristotle being one of discreteness, separation, categorization, division—all functional rational items, but useless from the mystic standpoint of returning from said separation into unity. What is scary paradox for the rational brain pops Zen champagne corks for someone on a mystic path.
Relating this to Trump’s cabinet picks—notwithstanding his Uranus conjuncting his birth sun in Gemini, the planet of surprise, innovation, unexpected change, revolution, and for all you TDSers out there: humanitarian ideals—people are going into paroxysms of rational strife trying to align all his nominations to one side of a divide or another, so that they will be true and satisfy Aristotle. What they never comprehend is that it is they who create the divide, it does not exist organically. But instead of allowing these humans to be all true and simply who they are, the discourse has everyone following Aristotle, and conclude from the “law” of the excluded middle that Trump has to be either a complete phony and tool of Israel3 because of some connections of his choices, or Trump is the sword of King Jesus redeeming the world from the deep state because of other attractive picks. As you do at the Greek diner, pick a side with dinner. And people’s emotional well being springs from these choices.
Empedocles has this illusory cosmos running on the pump of Love (Aphrodite) and Strife. In the ancient Indian systems they are sukha and duhkha, pleasure and pain, and the hinderance to our spiritual development is attachment to either. Aversion is an attachment. And for Empedocles the all-day sucker’s attachment is Love. We (some of us anyway) love to love Trump’s picks of Tulsi, RFKj, Gaetz, Homan, Musk, Vivek, and attach to what we project upon them unilaterally. And we love thinking about the strife they will bring. Then we attach to hating Rubio, Sefanik, Wiles, Hegseth and Ratcliff for their attachment to Zionism. And beyond that, there is the huge evangelical Christian attachment to Trump and Israel.
As Macbeth says at the beginning of the play, when he hadn’t seen nuttin’ yet: “So foul and fair a day I have not seen”.
All love and strife, and our choice, always, is to submit to emotional attachment to either, or, to find the freedom, the Sanskrit word is moksha, within these movements, since there is nothing but this illusion, and no thing we can do about it. The freedom within pure witnessing of manifestation. Then our activity, our karma, emerges from that silence, with what the moment requires, rather than following like lemmings media instructions, alt or corporate.
PS
This was my biggest chuckle in a long while, sent by a dear friend. The “Be Here Now 2025 Ram Dass Weekly Planner”! Sums up for me new age spirituality.
Great last verse from the classic song “Gunning for the Buddha” by Shriekback mid 80s.
Death and Money make their point once more In the shape of philosophical assassins Mark and Danny take the bus uptown Deadly angels for reality and passion Have the courage of the here and now Don't take nothing from these half-baked Buddhas When you think you got it paid in full You got nothing, you got nothing at all
Feels like there's a play on words lurking in there somewhere with "Empedocles" - maybe "Impede these cabinet picks please!" or something along those lines... :)
I’m Krys Crimi and I approve this posting. :-)
Feels like there's a play on words lurking in there somewhere with "Empedocles" - maybe "Impede these cabinet picks please!" or something along those lines... :)