I love the momentary confusion of seeing two apparently contradictory statements. The pause in daily life as your eyes narrow at the sentence and you wonder, "how can that be?" Take, for instance, this sentence:
You both already are and never will be a Neo-Aristocrat.
By our rules of grammar, this sentence is nonsensical. How can someone both be and never be something? This violates our sense of time, of being, of reality. Yet, these senses of ourselves exist only in language and the paradox exploits the limitations of our understanding.
I love paradoxes most for this reason. Not only do they lead us to a deeper understanding of the world when we resolve them, but they also remind us of the limitations of our language. And that is a trap we all fall into too often.
What is meant by the above paradox?
Neo-Aristocracy is not a set point, it is a process. It isn't a state of being, but a way of being. It is the ideal that is always out of reach, but in the process of striving anyways, we reach it. We live in a world of cycles upon cycles upon cycles. Things are always, constantly changing around us and we must continue to adapt to them. There will always be new things to learn, new revelations to have, new bests to achieve. You will never reach the form of the Neo-Aristocrat, but reaching the goal is less important than the reaching itself.
Focusing on the process is not as comforting as being able to fulfill a list of requirements necessary to reach the perfect state. There is a great deal of assurance that comes from the idea that you have arrived, no longer have to strive, can bask in your completion. But that is not how reality work. What Neo-Aristocratism lacks in comfort it makes up for in freedom and reality.
Do you have any paradoxes in your life?
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