Dr. Clement Richards wore a tea-coloured smile that permanently stretched the length of his face. He had leathery brown skin closer to the colour of copper than clay. His smile beamed warmth while his eyes wore a weary wisdom. A pair of hazelnuts encased in a wrinkled shell.
“Good morning lads!”
Strong notes of colonial English echoed through the classroom. Perhaps in the same style of English that had converted his Brahman father into a Christian. I wonder if his teaching voice resembled the style of the missionaries who coaxed many on the island of Ceylon.
“A key idea throughout A Passage to India is the philosophical principle of Dialectics…”
To a platoon of schoolboys in navy uniforms and high black socks, a word like Dialectics was just another word. A drop in an ocean of abstraction we had encountered that day. It vortexed in our minds in a whirlpool of words like chirality, respiration, differentiation, lâcheté.
“Dialectics is when you realise the higher truth among a set of seeming contradictory opposites.”
There was a cadence and conviction with which Dr. Richards spoke. There was spirit in his words. For a 16-year-old, an encounter with words that held the gravitas of philosophy was rare. The word hung in the air with the allure of a magic trick: thick with drama and complicit with fascination.
“Let me give you an example: consider Love. There is Romance in Love. And there is Lust in Love. These two aspects can sometimes seem in tension. However, the higher truth is the principle that can unite these opposites. To engage these opposites in a dialectical relationship is to realise the higher truth…”
……
When I first met the concept a decade ago, Dialectics was a fancy throw in for an English Literature essay. Since then, I have found it an extremely valuable way to look at the world and engage with ideas.
Dialectical Thinking is a descent into the grey. It is in the greyness, between the absolute black and the ethereal white. An ocean of greyness underneath which I have found juts of coral I can stick to like a plankton. It represents to me a willingness to play with opposites and contradictions under the intention of realising potentially hidden truths. The pieces I write here, whether tremors of poetry, feigns at fiction, or wisdoms from the soapbox, carry the same spirit of what caught my attention in Dr. Richards’ English class.
The ocean of grey reflects patches of clouds and blue skies. I have tried to cast them here onto a canvas of words. I don’t know what lurks in the ocean of grey. But I do know whatever emerges is from a place of authenticity. At the minimum, my hope is I will continue to cultivate and curate this space as I cultivate and curate my world. At the maximum, my hope is that these words may help, or encourage, or connect with someone else. Perhaps grant people a coral refuge with enough plankton so to not feel lonely in this world of “black” and “white”.
August 2021
