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STEP 6: Use Paradox
The balance of power
First, let's look at this relationship of opposites.
All
the activities of our world are built around a dynamic tension
between opposing forces. There is a natural balance between rest and activity and
between expansion and contraction. Examples abound: the ocean tides, a pendulum, summer
and winter, day and night, our patterns of work and rest, and the movements of our heart
and lungs. These are essential life-sustaining rhythms. The Emergency Response and the
Calming Response also form a relationship between two equally powerful and opposing
systems within the body that help to maintain our balance of health.
Polarity creates and maintains all types of activity.
Every book, play, short story, movie, or TV show involves at least one basic polarity:
antagonist "versus" protagonist, a detective "missing" the answers, a
man "wanting" a woman, a teenager "struggling between" right and
wrong, a poor family "seeking" food or shelter. Without this basic push-and-pull
found in conflict, desire, struggle, decisions, or other differences, these
"dramas" would not succeed. It is the tension of such unresolved problems that
maintains our interest and involvement. In world politics, major activity is found only
where a polarity exists, as was the ideological differences between the United States and
the Soviet Union from the 1960's through the 1980's, or one country's need to import what
it is missing and another's need to export what the other needs.
On a more personal level, all parents have experienced this
same dynamic when you take a toy away from child, instantly the struggle begins, because
now the child wants the toy. If you surrender and give the toy back, the
child is soon bored with it and moves to some other activity.
Scientifically, opposites attract. Place the
north end of a bar magnet next to another magnet. It will repel the other north end and
attach itself to the south end. To make sure we continue to populate the earth, Mother
Nature creates men and women as attractive opposites, producing desire.
In each of these examples there exists a complementary
relationship between two opposites. Think of your own life and the lives of others around
you. Whenever we set our minds to a goals, whether it is to graduate from school, achieve
recognition, cook a meal, or take a vacation, we create this dynamic tension by choosing
something we don't already have. We produce our positive, goal-oriented drive by
distinguishing between what we have now and what we want. We are "missing" that
degree, that recognition, that supper, or that vacation. And we "seek out" what
we are missing. Once we reach that goal, we stop working and come to rest. (Of course,
moments later we have some new goal, large or small, because this process takes place
constantly.) These polarities, and the ensuing tensions they create, are not bad
or wrong; in fact, they are the driving force of all action. If activity is
taking place within a given field, you will find a basic tension between two
opposites.
Now let's reverse the tables. How do you write a screenplay
that will fail at the box office? Here is one way: make all your characters happy and
content. Don't let any character worry, or set a tough goal for himself, or realize that
he needs something more in his life. Let no one struggle to fulfill a dream. How will your
audience react? Zzzzz.
How could we reduce the hostile tensions between to opposing
countries? One way would be to devote a greater amount of media and government attention
to our similarities instead of our differences, thus reducing the degree of polarization.
Or we could discover a foe that is more powerful than either county alone (a worldwide
disaster, another Hitler, or aliens from outer space). This would shift the dynamic
tension toward a new polarity, a new "them versus us."
How could you make yourself depressed? By never setting any
goals for yourself, by never striving toward the future. By not believing that things
change or that you can change. By expecting that tomorrow will turn out just as badly as
yesterday did. How could you deepen your depression? By creating a polarity in your mind
between "everybody else" (who can change) and you (who can never be different).
How is this related to panic? In the
most powerful ways.
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