11 May 2012
There is no way of determining an exact opposite. Mathematicians may try, saying maybe that the opposite of 3 is -3, but they are still similar in principle, and therefore not opposite. 3 and -3 are numbers, and both parts of the English language and so both fit into at least two categories. for something to be exact opposite, they must be opposites whilst being totally unconnected. This is subtly different to polar opposites. Every opposite we hear about is relative to what it is describing: (eg, men and women, yin and yang) but both these examples are almost entirely the same relative to the universe. Men and women are both different examples of members of a hairy mammalian species living mostly on planet earth. Yin and yang are both features of Taoism, and so both part of a religion, and represented by parts of the same sign. Even black and white are largely the same in comparison to some things. What if you're blind from birth? You may have no concept of black and white. They're both shades, or extremes of intensities of light, and so connected. The only thing that you can possibly say has an exact opposite is the universe, or rather all matter Contained within it (assuming that this is the only one, which is extremely unlikely). Even this, however, has it's problems. The exact opposite of the universe would be nothing, but the universe and nothing are both words and ideas, and so neither the words or ideas can be expressed, as this would connect them. You would have to not think or talk about either nothing or anything. The only way this could work is to say that the universe does not have an opposite (meaning, really that nothing is the opposite of all matter, and so the opposite of all matter is nothing). The opposite of everything would be not having an opposite, which would be nothing in in it's simplest terms: Not anything able to be labelled or anything at all. No definite anything, so just nothing, but not nothing, because nothing is a word and concept. It's confusing, I know. The opposite of the universe cannot be something, because the universe is everything, but even the idea of nothing is something, so the opposite cannot exist, as to exist it would be something and therefore not nothing. Also, the universe mainly consists of nothing (the gap between electron shells, vacuum, etc...), so you'd have to think of the universe as it was before the big bang, as an infinitely small and infinitely dense dot of everything. However, before the big bang, if we then assume, with our limited knowledge, there can't have been anything else, as the universe is everything, because there wasn't anything for everything to be put into, and so the super dense and virtually non existent dot of universe would have no context to be put into, (tree falls in forest and nobody hears, etc, only there is no forest. Only the tree, which now cannot fall because it has nothing to fall from or to) and so, being absolutely the only thing in existence, may as well not exist at all, as it has nothing to exist into or with (because everything exists relative to everything else, but absolutely everything cannot be relative to anything, as it includes everything, and so there is nothing for it to be relative to, so it is not really there). So. The universe is nothing, because there is probably nothing else that is anything. Nothing (the universe) is therefore the exact opposite of nothing, but cannot be. So the universe is nothing, which in turn has no opposite because nothing is still something. Here I have proved that something is nothing and nothing is something. So, the opposite of nothing is nothing, but not nothing, which in turn has to be something, so neither everything nor nothing have any opposites at all because they are largely one and the same.
I tried telling this to the people who came up with 'opposites day', but I think they went away.
If you get any of this, please pat yourself on the back, because my brain hurts.
Exact Opposite. • Opuss № I