Journalists often use the word “paradox” when they’re actually referring to a contradiction. It isn’t just semantic, because they are totally different things.
Indeed, the difference between a paradox and a contradiction is the difference between insight and understanding, and upholding conflict and confusion.
My definition of a philosopher is a person with a low threshold for contradictions, and a love of paradoxes. Contradictions are two things that are antithetical, whereas paradoxes are elegant truths.
Consider Trump’s head-spinning contradictions. Yesterday a reporter asked him: “Mr. President, you’ve said the war is ‘very complete’ but your defense secretary says, ‘This is just the beginning’. So which is it?”
Trump’s eyes darted left and right then down. “Well, I think you could say both,” he replied.
There’s a method behind that madness. Trump believes the truth is whatever he says it is in the moment, and feels no need to respond honestly, or even coherently. And when he can’t have it both ways with a question, he automatically calls it “fake news.”
The report ended with the remark, “On taxes or tariffs or health care or war and peace, you literally can’t pin down what he’s going for. It’s a real paradox.”
No, it’s not a paradox; it’s a deliberate, if largely subconscious tactic of contradiction, with the purpose of speaking out of both his mouth and his arse so he can spew gas at any time, and reverse himself the next moment if he so desires.
There is a larger question: To what degree is Trump the ultimate manifestation of decades of New Age solipsism, embraced by Psychology Today as, “Your thinking creates your reality?”
The reality of the world, as contrasted with the actuality of nature, is generated by the human mind. Even so, “Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn’t go away.”
So why do journalists need to understand the difference between a contradiction and a paradox? Because when they use these words with very different meanings synonymously, it not only confuses citizens, it increases the confusion around the issues.
A contradiction is defined as “a combination of statements, ideas, or features of a situation that are opposed to one another.” For example, the war with Iran is “very complete” and “just beginning.”
A paradox, on the other hand, is “a seemingly self-contradictory statement or proposition that when investigated or explained proves to be well-founded or true.”
Contradictions need to be exposed and resolved; paradoxes are to be understood and appreciated. Incoherence and conflict are inherent in contradictions, whereas paradoxes are a bit like koans, prompting insights that go beyond verbal explanation.
In short, contradictions produce conflict and chaos, whereas paradoxes are clarifying and elegant.
To be human is to be faced with many contradictions, inwardly and outwardly. When a contradiction is resolved however, there is clarity and freedom.
Many people are ok with contradictions, but those who, like Trump, thrive on them are bad actors. But he’s merely the tip of America’s black iceberg. The pathology isn’t limited to his dissembling inner circle, such as Karoline Leavitt, the White House press secretary who “defends each of Trump’s changeable excuses with equal ferocity.”
Effectively the entire Republican Party, and his hard-core “base” of 35-40% of Americans (anything over 20% is not a political base, but a cultish following), trots along behind this morally and mentally deranged man, with progressives hanging breathlessly on each tiny dip in his approval ratings.
How did we come to this pass? What are the underlying conditions in the culture and body politic that gave rise to such a president, administration and government?
Much larger issues than America’s decline are coming to a head however. The greatest unresolved contradiction is humankind’s relationship with nature.
Homo sapiens evolved within the seamless wholeness of nature like all other life, yet humans are fragmenting and destroying the Earth. Why is that, and can man’s increasing contradiction be resolved, philosophically and pragmatically? It cannot so long as scientists try to efface the contradiction between man and nature.
Homo sapiens is different from all other animals, since all other animals live within ecological niches on this planet. Man is the creature that broke the bonds of ecological niche through the evolution of symbolic thought, enabling us to adapt and exploit every environment on earth except Antarctica.
Our adaptiveness is both the source of our immense success and increasing failure as a species. Success because the human species exploits all environments, and has technologically developed to the point that there are plans to mine the moon. Failure because we have depleted and fragmented the earth to the breaking point through greed and lack of insight into ourselves.
The evolution of thought gave us the unparalleled power to consciously separate and recombine reified things in our environments. But failing to be self-knowing and understand the basic illusion of thought, we alienated ourselves from nature and divided ourselves from each other, generating innumerable wars.
With sufficient insight, man’s existential contradiction resolves into a compassionate paradox. Then we’ll be done with malevolent leaders, and emerge from this darkest night of humanity’s soul.
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The word “meditation” and an image with three Trumps seems, um, ‘contradictory’.
“A contradiction is defined as “a combination of statements, ideas, or features of a situation that are opposed to one another.” For example, the war with Iran is “very complete” and “just beginning.””
A more nuanced understanding is that this makes complete sense taken from both Trump’s writings in “The Art of the Deal” and the long standing “The Art of War”. Has it occurred to you that when fighting a war, one of the most important strategies in an informational conflict that leaves the enemy, in this case the Iranian regime, completely confused as to whether the war is ending tomorrow or in 2030? I know deception doesn’t fit in with ‘honesty/transparency’, but this is war, and war is never pretty.
THe writer had nothing to do with the image
I didn’t say they did. But the series is on “meditation”, it’s in the title, and the article discusses Trump, and thus, I presume, the image. I find it odd that a meditation series in the Vanguard goes right back to politics.
I spent a lot of time trying to figure out the right image and settled on that. I don’t want my image choices to detract from the work.
Also you might consider- “ The term “meditations” in classical philosophy refers to a specific genre of reflective writing. Rather than systematic treatises or dialogues, meditations are personal philosophical exercises—texts intended to cultivate wisdom, discipline the mind, and guide ethical living. They are often introspective, fragmentary, and practical rather than argumentative.”
well, color me stupid :-|
The image captures Trump’s derangement.
“A more nuanced understanding” would be funny if it wasn’t so heartless about the death and destruction from this needless war of choice. The most gracious response comes from Sydney Blumenthal’s last column:
“The belief that coherent sense can be made out of Trump’s shuffling words is a weakness of the rational mind that refuses to accept the impulses of the inveterate demagogue for what they are. Searching for reason in the jungle of Trump’s tales may compel people to superimpose logic where there is none in order to satisfy the need for some semblance of soundness.”
I squat by my comments. Merely painting Trump as deranged does nothing for the conversation that you clearly have no interest in.