How I Met Your Mother and Philosophy (34 page)

Barney shows them the video resume. Everyone knows that the video starts with an explosion from which Barney's name comes out. When Georgy and Gramey see this explosion, they look at each other, and Georgy says: “Are you thinking what I'm thinking, Herr Doktor Professor Priest?” Gramey goes “Yup, I think I am thinking what you're thinking, I mean, the explosion . . .” And Georgy says: “Yes, my friend, the explosion, we're both thinking the same thing.”

And he continues: “You see, the explosion at the beginning of your video resume is not accidental. More precisely, this explosion is triggered by your conception of the possimpible. As Creepy Monk Guy surely explained to you, a true contradiction in a system—such as the one taking place in the possimpible where the possible and the impossible become one—is like a bomb in the system itself. Now Barney, listen, faced with that bomb, you need to choose. You can stay with Toga Guy and Creepy Monk Guy and leave this bomb under the ground, just ignore it. That way you'd remain faithful to rule number one of Toga-Guy philosophy bro code—the law of non-contradiction. You'd have most bros—all the normal bros—on your side. But then you'd have to give up the the possimpible and gracefully concede defeat.

“Yet there is a way to win the bet against Toga Guy and Creepy Monk Guy. You need to learn to handle the fire of the explosion triggered by the contradiction of the possimpible. This would mean going
beyond the limits of thought
of normal bros and trying to join the band of legendary philosophy bros.”

Barney's a bit nervous. He says: “Okay guys, I'm with you. No bro leaves a bro behind. But how can I break rule number one of the philosophy bro-code? As far as I understood it, this Toga Guy bro-code is for normal bros. Are there any other philosophy bro-codes? I mean, are there bro-codes for
legendary
philosophy bros? Toga Guy said that the possimpible is impossible in principle and Creepy Monk Guy proved that a contradiction
can send me and my crazy talk about the possimpible straight to hell.”

Gramey pats Barney on the back and says: “Don't worry, bro, we're here to help you. First of all, if someone says that the possimpible is impossible because the impossible cannot be possible he's simply begging the question. He's simply saying that the possimpible is impossible because it's impossible. He's not really proving anything to you. He needs something more to destroy your possimpible world. But you also need something more to change his world and to prove that the possimpible does exist. They say they want to teach you how to think and live, but actually, you can change their way of thinking and living if you find a good argument for proving the existence of the possimpible.”

And Georgy goes on (finally slipping into the twenty-first-century way of talking): “Yeah Barney, Gramey's right, and you don't need to be afraid of breaking rule number one of Toga Guy's philosophy bro code. That philosophy bro code is great, but it mostly teaches you how to handle only standard-bros' philosophical situations. There are situations which are not common and dynamics which are not standard—such as the possimpible—that aren't covered by the Toga Guy bro code.

“But you're lucky, dude! Look at me and Gramey. We both wrote legendary philosophy bro codes to handle things that can't be captured by standard philosophy bro codes. We'll teach you how to handle the explosive fire of the contradiction involved in the possimpible. To do that, you'll need to go beyond the limits of standard thought and to come up with thoughts capable of grasping uncommon, non-standard things. We can call the world of these uncommon, non-standard things the
world of the awesome
. So, we have to go from standard thinking to awesome thinking, and then we can handle the explosive power of contradictions.

Barney looks at Gramey and Georgy. He takes a long breath and shouts: “I knew it! I knew it! I knew I was right even if I still don't know why! Okay guys—he gives them a victory fist bump——you've gotta bump this!” But Gramey says: “Calm down, Barney. The victory fist bump needs to wait. First, pay attention. The legendary contradiction path taking us into the dimension of awesomeness is not an easy path to walk. Are you ready to follow us and meet the dark side of philosophy?”

Barney's becoming more and more curious and excited: “Okay guys! This is not going to be easy, but nothing easy is awesome, and I want to be not only awesome in a manly way, but awesome from every possible point of view, which means absolutely awesomely awesome, and so, my dear bros, also philosophically awesome. Come on! Show me exactly why I've been right all along!”

Georgy takes out of his bag a big book, titled
Science of Logic
. He puts the book in Barney's hands and solemnly says: “Barney, this is my philosophy bro code and it's meant to capture the essence of the dimension that we have named awesomeness. In the very core of the book there is a statement which will help you to understand how to win the challenge of thinking the contradiction of a possimpible world.

“In this book I write that everything is inherently contradictory, which could be translated by saying that everything in our world is possimpible. This is not a nonsensical statement. Quite the contrary, what I want to say is exactly that the true nature of everything involves a kind of contradictory structure. For instance, everything has limits, right? Everything begins and ends somewhere. So let's look at the structure of the limit itself. A limit doesn't have to be seen merely as the place in which something stops being what it is. It's also the place within which something begins to be what it is.

“Look at the beer you're drinking. The limit of the beer is not simply the place in which the beer is not the beer anymore. It's also the place within which the beer starts to be the beer. In this sense, the limit of the beer is both the beer and not the beer. You see, Barney, this is a contradiction, and if you think that everything is limited, and that the limit of everything, and of the beer as well, is what tells us what something is, we can really say that everything has a contradictory structure.”

Georgy looks at Gramey, he raises his hand and says: “Contradiction high five!” Obviously, Gramey high-fives him back and says: “Okay bro, you really get the point and actually, when I was writing my philosophy bro code I was thinking about you, because I wanted to show that you are absolutely right in claiming that there are true contradictions in reality and I do think that Barney is right in the way he talks about the possimpible. I named the thesis that there are true contradictions ‘dialethism' and the title of my philosophy bro code
actually is
In Contradiction
. In this bro code I try to teach people how to think and live a world that contains true contradictions, or, to put it in Barney's terms, how to think and live in a possimpible world.

“Okay Barney, I don't have this philosophy bro code with me now, but I can give you a few pages I wrote on the same topic, where you will find something really interesting for your challenge. The title of this bunch of pages is “What Is So Bad about Contradiction?” but I could just as easily have called it “What's So Bad about the Possimpible?” In this article I also talk about limits, and I spell out the structure of the limit in the same way that Georgy did in his
Science of Logic
.

“Let's consider the limit of MacLaren's. My dear Barney, we could ask: What's the limit of MacLaren's? Suppose you're walking into MacLaren's and so you are at the very limit (at the very edge) of the pub. Are you in or not in MacLaren's? You can't say that you simply are in MacLaren's because there are an infinite number of points in MacLaren's that are MacLaren's without being the limit of MacLaren's. But you can't say that you're not in MacLaren's either because there are an infinite number of points that are not MacLaren's without being the limit of MacLaren's. In order to say the limit of MacLaren's, or in order to say where you are when you are getting into MacLaren's, you need to say that you are both in and not in MacLaren's. Only the unity of these two opposite sentences, only this contradiction, can say what the limit is by saying where you are when you are exactly in this limit.”

Then Georgy chimes in: “Well put, Gramey! You see, Barney, my conception of the limit and Gramey's conception actually mirrors your conception of the possimpible. We do not think of the limit as a fixed place where something simply ends, nor do we think of what is limited as a kind of fixed entity which is kept in prison by its limits. Quite the contrary, we have a dynamical conception of reality where the limit is the place where something overcomes itself and meets its not-being. We could think of the relationship between the possible and the impossible along the same terms. Let's say that the possible is like what is limited and the impossible is its not-being, that is, what the possible cannot be, or, the place where the possible stops. We have two choices.

“On the one hand, we can think of the relationship between the possible and the impossible in Toga Guy's terms and see
the possible and the impossible as fixed entities each one in front of the other, none of them affecting the field of the other or tending to mix up with it. There is no contradiction there, but there is no movement either. Each one of the two opposites stands on its side, there is nothing possible turning into the impossible and, above all, there is nothing impossible becoming something possible. The possible remains possible and the impossible remains impossible. There is no point of connection between the two.

On the other hand, we can think of the relationship between the possible and the impossible in non-classical terms, or, we could say, in awesome terms, that is to say, such as a dynamical relationship where the two opposite terms turn one into another. And so something that happens, and therefore something which is actually possible, once it has happened, it becomes impossible because it belongs to a past dimension that can never come back. Or, something that is impossible, that is, something belonging to a future dimension that can never become present, actually does happen since the conditions which prevent it from happening change, and make it happen. Therefore, there is something possible that turns into something impossible, and something impossible that turns into something possible. In the very turning point of one opposite into the other, the two opposites touch one another, or, to quote you, Barney, this point is the place where the possible and the impossible meet to become . . . the possimpible.”

Gramey enthusiastically says: “But there's another important thing to remember. None of the two points of views at stake—neither the fixed coherent nor the dynamical here contradictory—is simply wrong. They just provide a different view on reality. The first one is like a fixed picture of a process. It gives you a precise and coherent but surely not-complete view of what happens within the process itself. The second one is like seeing a movie and having the chance to get a glance at how the whole process develops. It provides a more complete understanding of what's going on; but it also tries to handle the more complex logic underlying the process.

“Let's suppose, Barney, that you're in a strip club. The view on reality number one would be like having a series of pictures of the strippers' stripping process. This would be a perfectly coherent and pleasant view of the strip club reality. But consider
the view on reality number two. It would be like looking at the live stripping dynamical process and developing an all-encompassing knowledge of the process itself. Nevertheless, the logic of the live stripping process would be more complex than the pictures-in-series one. Take the instant in which a stripper is removing the last article of clothing. Is she or is she not naked? She is at the limit of being naked and thus, if we want to describe what's going on, we seem to be forced to accept the contradictory statement according to which in the very moment in which the stripper is getting completely undressed, she is both naked and not naked. The logic underlying the undressing process would be more difficult to handle, but wouldn't this way of looking at the strip club reality be happier?

“Barney, as you said, ‘Nothing and everything, is possimpiple'. And now we can really get this straight: nothing is possimpible if you take the first non-contradictory Toga-Guy path; everything is possimpible if you take the path I took with Georgy, that is, the path of contradiction.”

Then Barney asks: “Yes, bros, I'm starting to understand what you mean. But what do I actually need to do in order to embrace this awesome contradictory path?”

Georgy says: “You just need to do what you always do without thinking every time you say: ‘Challenge accepted!' You only need to take your own limits not as something that prevents you from doing what you want to do and that everyone says is impossible. Your limits are not like a prison that separates you from the outer world and hold you back from actually acting in it. Quite the contrary, your own limits are something there to be overcome, they are the very place where you meet the outer world and that thus allow you to actually live the world not as something fixed in front of you, but as something that can be changed and improved by changing and improving yourself.

“This is exactly what I was trying to explain in my bro-code when I analyzed what the finite is. I claim that the finite is not something fixed, as against infinity, because the finite is itself only insofar as it ends and it is not itself anymore, namely it is itself only insofar as it passes over into its not-being. At the same time, in the very place where the finite ends and it is not itself anymore, that is, in the place where the finite passes over into its not-being, the finite is this not-being, or, it is not itself anymore. Therefore, in order to be truly itself, the finite has to overcome its
own limit, and in this very limit a contradiction is involved, because in this limit the finite is itself, and it is not itself in the same time and in the same sense. The process in which the finite overcomes itself in order to be truly itself is what I call infinity, which is nothing but what you, Barney, call the possimpible. In fact, whereas infinity is the process through which the finite overcomes its limits in order to meet and be one with its not-being, that is the infinite itself, the possimpible is the process through which the possible overcomes its limit in order to meet and be one with its not-being, that is the impossible.”