10001110101001 is a line of binary code, each number represents one possibility, yes or no. Descartes professed in his philosophy, the idea of Cartesian dualism: the separation of body and mind. Science has categorized objects as animate or inanimate; religion has given us good and evil, morality: right and wrong. Shakespeare created Hamlet to lament: “to be or not to be” and Bill Hicks profoundly stated that “all matter is merely energy condensed to a slow vibration, that we are all one consciousness experiencing itself subjectively, there is no such thing as death, life is only a dream, and we are the imagination of ourselves. Here’s Tom with the Weather.”

All the ideas above have a core sense of duality, yet human experience always presents a muddled, fluid manifestation of these philosophical polarities. Not yes or no, but usually maybe; a combination of mental state and physical well being; animate objects can be less animated than inanimate one; whether you want to be or not to be, you just are; and even with the singularity of the universe perceiving itself subjectively, the cosmic randomness of life allows for moments of connect and alienation with mother consciousness. As humans we have capacity for both fear and love, the roots of all negative and positive emotions and actions. The world is grey, this is no arcane learning from some obscure mystery school in Egypt, but is part of our own intuitive consciousness. We understand the layers and nuances of humanity and beyond, in theory it’s all concrete. Yet, lines get blurred by emotion and thought patterns.

We like boxes, married/ single, male/female, good/ bad etc. A strange dissonance often overcomes people when they are unable to categorize the nature of a fellow human being. This lack of awareness leads to persecution and hatred. It makes people uptight and pretences come to the forefront of interaction. We need to understand that everything around us is a divine orgy of individuality. The more we try to conform, the deeper the proverbial stick jams up our collective asses (pardon my French). People we tend to antagonise always end up finding their moment of redemption, people we put on pedestals always fall from grace. It’s self destructive and needs to stop. We desensitize our boys and over sensitize our girls, and with an ever expanding manifesto of social expectations we wonder why we are so decadent and repressed.

Tolerance is allowing duality to exist. We are a contradictory species in our very fibre of being. Allowing duality to exist will in itself rid the world of duality. Or something like that. Take it with a pinch of salt, life’s a cosmic joke, don’t take yourself too seriously.