Duality of Nature

Freedom is forever elusive. Man's quest for freedom only leads him from one servitude to another - albeit in a different form. That is why he takes drugs - to free himself from the pains of day to day drudgery and to escape from the realities of life, but that lands him into another kind of subjugation - drug addiction. A rat freed from cage ventures out in freedom, but soon he has to race for his life to escape the wrath of the cat. The quest for sexual freedom often leads one to marry, but soon he finds himself chained to another entity - the family. Fed up with the mechanical progression of this material world, man seeks solace in religion, but is ultimately enslaved to dogmas and religious rituals.

After gaining independence from colonial rule, the free countries of the world at first relish their freedom, but very soon discover that they are subservient to other larger entities - the metropolitan centres and the global order. Aesthetic advancements and technological innovations expand the horizon of human potential, but at the same time enchains man to his own creation. And when the atomic and cosmic objects fly away from their orbits, they merely plunge into other orbits. Thus freedom is forever elusive - a contradiction, an illusion.

But in a larger context, the simultaneous coexistence of freedom and servitude is, only natural, and is apparently, a manifestation of the duality of nature. As the philosophers belonging to the Chinese school of Naturalism (300 B.C.) would have said more than two millennia ago, the basic dualism of nature involves two complementary and balancing forces - such as the rhythms of day and night, male and female, hot and cold, light and dark, push and pull, love and hate, sorrow and mirth, positive and negative. These philosophers used to dub the male attribute as 'Yang' and the female attribute as 'Yin'. According to them, a balance between the two attributes in an individual ensured harmony and health. ('Yang' and 'Yin' are, by the way, used in the national flag of South Korea and also forms the scientific basis of the wonder-drug 'Ginsheng').

It appears from the foregoing that the fruits of life are always double-edged. Consequently, when one is blessed with an asset, he is also burdened with a liability - almost similar to the balance sheet entries in our accounting books. Due to the same logic, the ebb follows the tide, the crest follows the trough and a counteracting force comes into play whenever a force is applied, just as Sir Isaac Newton had said more than three centuries ago. It is thus natural that freedom and servitude should go together, hand in hand. Life is a mixed blessing and maintaining harmony and balance while standing between the two opposing currents is the best recipe for success.

The writer is editor of 'Bangladesh Quarterly'