Why is Life Full of Paradoxes?

It is easy to see the world as a grim place right now. With all the dispiriting news articles and genuine, actual wars, it is easy to fall into nihilism and resign to despair. Therefore, one must ask how we can survive in such a world. Is it better to exist realistically, facing these troubles, but letting them permeate the mind and destroy your faith, or is it better to live far away from the issues of the world, optimistic yet distanced, only to be disappointed when reality strikes? The answer, as author Jim Collins proposed, existed in an in-between of these two ideas – it existed in a paradox.

I’ve talked about paradoxes before on this blog, most pertinently the philosophy of Absurdism, which tells us that despite the paradox of humans having an innate desire for an innate meaning where we will find none, we should live anyway. It further teaches us that despite any paradox you find in the world, despite any fault in logic, you should still continue to live. 

However, I now present a way to harness a paradox instead of a way of coping with them. In his book “Good to Great”, Jim Collins showed an example of a man who did just that. He wrote about a man named James Stockdale, who, during the Vietnam War, was taken as a prisoner. For 7.5 years, he lived in a camp, being tortured and abused, and yet he kept his faith that eventually he would make it out. However, he never described himself as an “optimist”, because he knew it was foolish to rely on such an unreliable life source as hope. Herein lies the paradox, the impossible balance one must strike. You must not lose hope, and yet you cannot rely on it.

This divide in making sense of “hope” reflects a larger divide in how thought generally works. On one hand, your brain cannot afford to despair, as your subconscious, bodily side would not be able to take such a weight. For this more instinctual, less rational side of your brain, an irrational hope is needed to keep it afloat. However, when interacting with the world with the rational, more slowly thinking part of your brain, relying on something like “faith”, or “hope”, can impede function. If you assume success where it is not guaranteed its arrival can further destroy you.

Further, paradoxes in general reflect the state of being that we are in. As absurdism pointed out, the human condition is a paradox, but there are also smaller paradoxes in everyday life. These can arise from miscommunications, incomplete knowledge, and that overall lack of information. Logic needs to account for every variable, but humans could not live that way, and so we must simplify. That simplification can sometimes result in paradoxes, but that means that they are the easiest and best way to get at the “objective truth” that was simplified away. For the Stockdale Paradox, the “truth” might be closer to the dual-brain explanation I gave just before, but for many people, the paradox idea that Jim Collins promotes is easier to understand and more effective. I leave it up to you to choose which message you prefer.

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