on the necessity of contradiction

Refusing to solve cognitive dissonance is a betrayal of the very thing that makes us human. A refusal to face the fact that the beliefs you once held so tightly are now in question, so rather than interrogate your worldview, you simply sit in the discomfort of contradiction because the truth is too costly.

But you might find that there’s no alternative. You navigate the world reasoning through contradictions; every event is caused by natural law, a slow consequence of what came before, but you’re an agent with free will who could have done otherwise. You say: determinism is true in theory, but choice is real in practice.

You see the exposed seams of your tightly woven story, yet hold on to these beliefs regardless, fearing what would happen if it begins to unravel.

But then maybe you ascend and find resolution, you may say: determinism is true in theory, and true in practice, but I’m none the wiser, so I’ll just live my life irrespective of this fact.

To which I would applaud, you’re perfectly consistent and no longer under the weight of contradiction. Unfortunately, in your pursuit of consistency you have performed a metaphysical suicide, denying yourself in order to avoid the tension, and you cannot convince me that you do this honestly. You yourself know the agency you have, if not, then why do you hesitate, regret, blame, and try, time and time again? But you still choose self-erasure, which is as egregious a contradiction as I’ve ever seen. It’s also a shit tradeoff.

So now that I’ve hopefully walked you back off the ledge, what on earth do we do with two apparent truths that contradict each other? What do we do in the face of tension that we cannot resolve? My aim here is to convince you that the answer isn’t to resolve these tensions, but that the tension is precisely the point.

When Niels Bohr says “The opposite of a correct statement is a false statement. But the opposite of a profound truth may be another profound truth” he wasn’t licensing incoherence, but he was giving name to something that is essentially the basis of my entire argument: the profundity of a truth is how encompassing its claim is, and to be truly encompassing it must contain all of its contradictions.

One of the clearest examples is the maxim: everything in moderation. It’s not simply self-referential; to follow it absolutely and be moderate in all things would be to violate the rule, but one must be moderate in all things, including being moderate itself. This is to say, the contradiction is not a flaw in the statement, but the very condition that makes it true.

Some truths are not just paired with their opposites; they’re constituted by them, remove their contradiction and you don’t clarify the truth, you render it useless - it’s an ontological feature, not a bug.

It’s the tension of Ibrahim (as) praying for a son, being granted Ishaaq (as), only to be commanded to sacrifice him, and being willing to do so. The paradox of wanting deeply and praying with conviction that God, the Hearer of all prayers, will accept your prayers, but also understanding that your specific asks may not be granted. It’s being the Knight of Faith as Kierkegaard put it.

It’s the paradox of knowing God is the one who guides whom He wills and misguides whom He wills, and yet your destiny is in your hands - which brings us back to square one, how do we actually reconcile these?

The answer isn’t to reconcile these tensions, but to understand that they are features of profound truths. To want deeply but submit wholly, and to believe in free will and yet God’s omniscience - the contradiction is the depth, it’s the third dimension that our linear reasoning cannot reconcile but knows deeply to be true.

So the conclusion is going to be absurd, and of course your worldview contradicts itself, the world is vast and contains multitudes, and that is the truth.