At the beginning of the Tao Te Ching, Lao Tzu says: The Tao gives birth to one, one life to two, two to three, and three to all things.
More than two thousand years later, Western semioticians extracted the Gremas symbol matrix from Lao Tzu's philosophical formulations.
This matrix of symbols divides the composition of the human value system into four symbols, yes, no, no, no,
Of course, this expression is the expression of the professional philosophical research field, and in short, it reveals a truth: the human value system is built on the dualism of good and evil, that is, Lao Tzu's two births, three births, three births, and all things.
From the overall perspective of human civilization, Jewish civilization constructed a dualism of light and darkness, with Jehovah the light and Satan in the darkness, and in the last judgment, the light forces will judge the dark forces.
Similar dualistic expressions also appear in Abrahamic monotheisms such as Christian civilization and Islamic civilization, and this dualism can be traced back to the ancient Persian Zoroazid civilization in the Middle East.
Xunzi and Mencius in the East also debated the good and evil of human nature, and eventually positioned Confucian civilization from the theory of sexual goodness, and the dualism of good and evil has continued to this day and has become the basic ethics of Confucian morality.
Even in modern times, the two pillars of modern civilization, socialist civilization and liberal civilization, have extended dualism to the geopolitical situation and spawned the Cold War.
We can say that dualism constructs human civilization, there is no basic value boundary between right and wrong, human civilization will not arise, and all literature, architecture, aesthetics, art, etc., can not happen.
However, existentialist philosophers such as Sartre and Camus warned that dualism would destroy humanity.
Their insight is profound, that when man places himself in the position of justice, then the value system gives himself an obligation to eliminate evil, a binary value judgment that dissolves reason and leads to devastating wars.
For example, Nazi Germany, which launched World War II, launched a devastating war out of racist dualism; militarist Japan, which invaded our country, also falsely classified our country as a backward nation and committed a large-scale invasion.
More essentially, dualism provides a channel for value sophistry: to obtain justice by adjudicating others.
Even in the present, we are often attacked by extreme dualists.
For example, if you are wary of infinitely inflated capital, they will say that you are feudal and engage in heavy agriculture and suppress business;
For example, if you encourage childbearing and advocate women returning to the family, they say that you discriminate against women and machismo.
This extreme dualism is stigmatized as a "diode", but the absolute attack on the "diode" is not another kind of "diode"?
This is the trap of dualism, the illusion of justice, which makes the mutual attack without moral baggage.
We must see that all kinds of absurd and simple dualistic disguises are scattered in society, disguised as liberal indulgence, disguised as mercantilism of commercial public welfare, disguised as feminist grand feminism, disguised as free consumerism...
However, when we point the gun at these sophistry thoughts, it is easy for us to put ourselves in the absolutely right position and forget to put the gun on our heads.
Dualism is a temptation that creates both good and evil.
Anyone can be seduced by dualism and fall into dogmatism, believing that their position is unbreakable, that what they have learned is the true truth.
How to break the dualism?