Image via WikipediaDear Readers,Time has been unkind to me lately, and so it is that I come back to you after nearly a month's hiatus. Perhaps Time will be kinder in the future. Perhaps you could write him a letter? Sadly, I have lost the address.
I've come to you today to discuss the idea of duality, aka "two-ness," in historical narrative. In literature, there are a lot of manners of conflict that can bleed into narrative and provide something dramatic to latch upon.
Take, for example, the your contemporaneous reinterpretation of Swan Lake depicted within the film Black Swan. The major antagonist in Swan Lake is not a black swan! The actuality of Swan Lake is much more complicated than that, but the film uses the construct of the Black Swan that is traditional in the ballet to approach the ideas of two-ness. This duality and confusion of characters is the theme that the film seizes upon, and it might seem strange.
In reality, though, humans seize on this kind of duality everywhere. Consider the current turmoil in Egypt. For the past three decades, Hosni Mubarak has maintained international support via a grip on Egypt maintained via the impression that there is a far worse antagonist to his power. I speak of the much-maligned Muslim Brotherhood, the spectre of your international relations that no doubt has throngs of supporters ready to seize power and take over Egypt. Correct?
No. They have 100,000 supporters in a country of 80 million. Yet the human mind seeks duality, and seizes upon these narratives as if they are fact. They play upon our fears and they lead us to identify with the apparently embattled.
And in some cases, they provide an excuse for our behavior. There are those who believe the world is against them because they struggle in so many ways, and who look to all corners to find their hidden antagonist. They are trained to this, or perhaps predisposed to this. I cannot be sure.
The fact remains, however, that we like to view things as dichotomous, whether or not this construct is false. Two-ness is in some ways a plague on our understanding of events, and it confuses the realities of a situation, at times. Often, competing forces are better described as an equilibrium, a whole system in balance. Alternately, sometimes the "opposition" that we add to something, for example the idea of "cold" being an antagonist of "hot," is in reality the mere absence of something. In this case, energy.
Sometimes this can be dangerous. Did the Soviet Union fail because of the United States, or because of its own inherent flaws? It seems that throughout the Cold War, the USSR struggled against itself from within just as it appeared to antagonize from without. And yet, this was viewed as a US-mediated collapse.
Did Rome fall to barbarian hordes? Of course not. Rome fell to economic drift and the gradual loss of standards throughout the empire. The so-called "hordes" just looted a corpse.
I can find you alternate time streams where these things are even more clear; instead of barbarians, it's Rome's own aristocracy that tears it apart, in one. In another, the Russian people cut off communication throughout the USSR, and the Party is left marginalized and irrelevant. In yet more, Hitler's paranoia causes him to win the wrath of the Wermacht, and his name is barely known.
Don't be fooled by the false dichotomy. Sometimes, the enemy from within, for better or worse, is the realer threat.
Always,
Dr. John Skylar
Chairman
Department of Anachronism
University of Constantinople
