What's your doubleness?

I’m an atheist (not an agnostic, an actual atheist) and yet I believe in the existance of the soul, and in reincarnation. This mainly because of personal experiences. I guess I justify it by deciding to believe that souls can exist and reincarnation can happen naturally, without the intervention of any deity.

I’m an agnostic, and I yearn to meet the elves in the machine just to know what might be there.

I am an atheist, and yet… occasionally, I pray. I don’t really know who or what I am praying to, but there ya’ go.

On the one hand I feel I should go with the flow and accept things for what they are and that everything will work out on the end. On the other hand I feel it is vital to take action, to make a stand and to fight tooth and nail for what I believe in.

I have immense self confidence, and almost no self esteem.

I’m a little bit country and a little bit rock and roll.

Somedays I’m the windshield, somedays I’m the bug!!!

And that’s the truth.

I am both highbrow and ‘lowbrow’.

A pure-blooded mongrel of crass elegance,
I casually specialise in magnanimously ridiculing my dearest enemies…

I love & yet hate pussies, dependant on which kind…..obviously.

I root for the underdog, believe less fortunate people need help, and some people have way too much (a liberal?) . And yet… I expect people to work for what they get. There should be no free handouts. (a coservative?)

I am highly romantic and live in a fantasy world at times, but I am also sardonic and caustic and revel in skewering foibles. (Think Catherine Earnshaw crossed with Elizabeth Bennet.)

I am very talkative, and extremely quiet- both extroverted and introverted.
I’m very shy but am also very friendly.
I am very opinionated but also very accommodating.
I can be really childlike, but can be very dark and cynical.
I put much, much stock in intelligence, but prefer to hang with people who don’t invest their ego into their intelligence.
I have a 115 Db hearing loss (I can’t hear jackhammers…) and am totally in love with music.
I’m a die-hard, don’t eff with me teacher but abhor the educational system.

My next tattoo will be a swirly, conjoined comedy/tragedy mask that I drew a few years ago, to represent all of these doublenesses/dualities.

I am sensual, yet shy. Political, yet private. My desire is to declare myself to all and sundry and yet I don’t want to say my name. This is, of course, because many of my views are not socially acceptable.

I am against this bifurcation of the objective and the irrational. I consider it to be a false dichotomy.

Does is have to be objective vs irrational? If so, I missed that memo.

@wundayatta That is often how the world has been conceptualized. That is often how knowledge has been conceptualized. Organized religion did it against magic. Philosophy did it against religion. The ‘hard’ sciences did it against humanities and men did it to women by relegating them to the realm of the emotional, the mysterious, the other. If you missed that memo, you missed how Western civilization developed.

I have enough “doubleness” for half the population of Milwaukee! Soldier and Christian; studying science and studying religion; libertarian with both conservative and liberal tendencies… the list is long. : ))

@Simone_De_Beauvoir : Since the bifurcation is a false dichotomy to you, I’m really curious to know how you account for opposites.

@Simone_De_Beauvoir Too much exposure to Eastern Civ, I guess. I had a strange education. I never studied Shakespeare, nor the American Revolution nor the Civil War. I missed a lot of other stuff, too.

I think it’s ok to create artificial separations in an attempt to understand something, so long as you remember to put them back together before you make any decisions about it.

My ‘doubles’ usually lead me into cognitive dissonance land. Since I talk about myself rather freely and cherish close friends that will call me out on it, it’s become increasingly easy to eliminate doubles from my life.

@ro_in_motion : I believe you’ve struck the heart of this question with cognitive dissonance. Is it an innate characteristic for humans to have that dissonance? Do we come by it naturally?

Yes to both. It’s rather easy to detect. Any time you feel guilt, shame, embarrassment, anger or surprise, you’re suffering from it. Speaking as a former comedian, most good if not all jokes are based on this principle.

Every day, we pick up ideas and ‘only sort of’ integrate them with related ideas. Because we do such a poor job of this, we end up having two or more ideas that directly conflict with each other.

Both the best friends I have in life and ny own experience tells me to ‘screw shame, screw guilt’. I know I will make mistakes on a daily basis. I can do my best by working on them by rooting out in me what caused it and repairing the damage I’ve done to others.

Here’s what WikiP says about it: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cognitive_dissonance

I think that Mankind is a lovely creation; artistic, sensitive and self improving. I also think Man is a stupid monstrosity out of kilter with nature and bringing the planet to ruin.

@Hawaii_Jake Just because something is a false dichotomy doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist as a lived experience in society. Gender is a social construct, we know that, yet it makes sense to a lot of people.

Do I contradict myself? Very well, then I contradict myself, I am large, I contain multitudes.
~Walt Whitman

@wundayatta Yeah, I understand.

Learn to live with ambiguity, grasshopper. : )

desperate for love yet shun and avoid it like the plague

I want to be happy but I enjoy being sad.

I know the so called friends I have in real life hate my guts but I still act as if they are my best friends because their words everyday teaches me the things I need to change or develop more in myself.