THE PHENOMENON OF DICHOTOMY

by Danny Heim

[photo Richard Croft via Wikimedia Commons]

[published: February 18, 2012 (6:30AM PST)]

The title might give you a wrong implication. There is nothing phenomenal about dichotomy by itself. Especially in my life, jezza me crakamacs, don’t get me started, my life is one continual dichotomy. It is only in these times I think about dichotomy as sort of an event. I notice that things seem to happen these days in opposites, polarized, and numbers seem to split down the middle a lot.

I’m going to talk about my roads here for just a bit in regards to something that happened with them in the last few days. Think of these roads as our culture in the developed world as I tell you the story, and then afterwards we’ll talk about what it means, or symbolizes. I’m gonna go on a bit; it’s sort of mathematical, sorry.

Very early Sunday morning, maybe 2AM, the wind kicked up and blew in a snow storm; nothing weird about that. But then Sunday about 9AM I left in my car and though I could see that the sun was shinning there was about an inch of snow all around me, but was happy to see there was not a bit of snow on the dirt road I was on, it was clear and dry, weird but cool. Eventually I came to the black top road, but it was a sheet of frozen snow? ‘Hum’, I thought, ‘the sun is shining, you’d think the dirt roads would be been snowy and melting, but they were clear and dry and then I would have expected the paved roads to be melted and drying but they’re frozen and snowy, oh well.’ I drove on.

I had about eight miles left to drive and it was all pavements. The entire eight miles had a perfectly laid sheet of frozen snow on it; it was like someone came in with a truck and a grader and spread it out, sort of weird really. This road has turns and valleys; you’d think there would have been some breaks, but not a one. ‘Oh well’, I past it off and got on with my day.

OK, that’s that one. Last night (the coming Tuesday after the story above) probably about 4AM the wind kicked up and blew in a snow storm (sound familiar?). I left in my car about 11AM this morning and was sad to see about an inch snow was covering everything including the dirt road I was on, there was no sun, ‘damn’, I thought. Eventually I came to the black top road, but it was as clear and dry as a hot day in June. “What the…” I said aloud.

I put short of a chart and an analysis thereafter at the end of this article. It’s the math I talked about earlier if you care to explore it. I put there for those of you who enjoy that sort of thing, I do as you will see. In any case, what’s above is enough to get the picture. And what is that picture? First let’s get it straight as to what it is not. Those of you, who have read me before know that I am a climate change nut, however, it’s not a climate change thing, nor is it a supernatural thing and it’s not a man made conspiracy thing as well. It is a weather event, though very rare and very weird I am quite sure it is scientifically explainable. Yet, it did happen, and I saw it happen. So what it becomes to me is something very symbolic about our times.

I don’t know about you, but I see these sort of dichotomies all the time. I have come to the conclusion they are telling of our present condition. And that isn’t anything intuitive either; just look at our elections in the last ten years or so. How many of them are winding up 50/50. I mean it’s almost eerie. What’d we have? Two presidential elections in a row (2000 and 2004) that was almost exactly 50/50? Add to that dozens of local and congressional elections doing the same thing since 2000? What’s up?

It’s more than that. Look at the dichotomy that exists in our political and social cultures. You have liberals and conservatives defined so dramatically, so polarized, that it seems that there is no possible way to close the gap. You have people that believe more than ever we got here by evolution and at the same time the creationist are getting ever more rutted in their position. Pagan ways are growing by leaps and bounds while Christianity is more fundamental than it was in the 50’s. The rich are getting richer, the poor are getting poorer. We get a record breaking cold snap, then turn around and get a record breaking heat wave. We have floods in Arkansas, and droughts in Texas, at the same time. Many times lately in the south it’s been cold where it should have been warm and warm when it should have been cold in the north. Here’s one for ya, the hottest average temperature rise since global warming began has been in the northern hemisphere and the worst of it is in the Arctic Ocean! Getting the picture?

We are a world of dichotomies here in the 21st century. Women are getting more and more independent of men, yet we have a testosterone problem with our young men who now have a favorite past time called gang raping. We have spiritual movements that get more and more about the self only and less and less about helping others, which is the exact opposite of spiritual thought that had existed for thousands of years. We have CEO’s that should have been put in jail but instead are collectively getting billions in bonuses. And now we have the ever crawling movement towards total war that will ultimately wind up as the east vs. west: China v America. Remember the past, it was us against us, the Revolutionary War, the Civil War, WW1, WW2. But then came, Israel, Korea, Viet Nam and now we got our arm all the way over to Iraq and Afghanistan. Well anyway, we’ll polarize the globe in war as well, China v America. But I hope we don’t, that’s for sure. I mean jezza me wallickers, it’s a trend I know, and trends are hard to stop, but c’mon, we gotta do better than this. It’s some stupid Sunday drive we’re on, let’s go home.

Tell me what you think this is about. It is so prevalent that it seems as though there is an outer control manipulating things to work out this way. But I don’t really believe that, it just looks like it. I believe it has much to do with our evolution, but it appears to be an evolution of hard knocks with weird and diametrically opposing events. However, I can’t really come up with any logical or reasonable explanations of why this form of evolution would be occurring, why so freaking hard? How does polarization advance our place in the universe?? Help me out.

The Math
Below is a list of the possible events and their rating as rarity goes. There will be the events described in the beginning of this article and then events that cover all other possibilities concerning the conditions of the roads on both days where it had snowed in the night with wind, and remember that Sunday after the snow it was sunny but slightly cold and Tuesday after the snow it was cloudy but slightly warm. The same amount of snow both times.

Possible Events Under the Conditions for The 2 Days In Question Rating
Both dirt and paved clear & dry Very Unusual
Both dirt and paved clear & wet Unusual
Both dirt and paved frozen snow Normal
Dirt road clear and dry; paved clear and wet Unusual
Dirt road clear and dry; paved frozen snow (Sunday's case) Very Unusual
Dirt road clear and wet; paved clear and dry Normal
Dirt road clear and wet; paved frozen snow Unusual
Dirt road frozen snow; paved clear and dry ( Tuesday's case) Very Unusual
Dirt road frozen snow; paved clear and wet Normal

Now let’s analyze this, so to speak. You have:
1. 9 possible events under the conditions of the two days in question.
2. 3 types of ratings, with each being equally distributed in this case, BTW.
3. Out of these 9 possibilities, the two that happen are both rated “Very Unusual”.
4. The two events that actually happened are at exact polar opposites in several ways:

a. Though it still would have been unusual, for Sunday it should have been the dirt roads with frozen snow and the paved clear and dry, it was converse.

b. Though it still would have been unusual, for Tuesday it should have been the paved roads with frozen snow and the dirt roads clear and dry, it was converse.

c. Both roads on both days did exactly the opposite, paved frozen on Sunday and then clear and dry on Tuesday and the dirt roads frozen on Tuesday and clear and dry on Sunday.

d. Both roads behaved equally “Unusual” on both days, the paved should have been clear and wet on Sunday with the dirt in frozen or at least slushy snow (Sunny but cold), and the dirt should have been clear and wet on Tuesday, with the paved in frozen or at least slushy snow (cloudy but warm). It was converse in both cases, except that both roads experienced clear and dry on opposite days, under these conditions clear and dry should not have happened on either day to either road, nor should have solid frozen snow, but those were the only things that happened. And what’s more weird, these roads conditions are at opposite ends of each other having frozen and snowy roads and clear and dry roads happening at the same time.

e. What did happen on both days was each road took a share at doing the most unusual event they could have. One did the cold thing while the other did the warm thing on one day, then they switched the next day and the one that did the cold on the first day did the warm on the next and the other that did warm on the first day did the cold on the next. Yet both doing something “Very Unusual” in all cases.