Difference

Getting something new is not possible without a gaping in the middle of the old 'same'. The 'same' affirmed and posed absolutely like a 'same itself' will necessarily remain closed on itself. From this same, closed on itself, nothing 'else' can be. For something 'else' to be, the 'same' has to be denied in its closed identity and opened on its otherness. But a negation which affirms itself becomes an assertion. An opposition which poses itself becomes a position. The otherness risks unceasingly to become identity and to close itself on itself. Unless leaving open the infinite otherness of the other-otherness…

Why the difference? Why not the 'same' one? Why the differential deployment? Why a multiple difference? Why the emergence of antagonisms? Why not a neutral indifference? Look at life, its creation and its evolution. A permanent inventiveness. The same eye evolves differently in molluscs and in vertebrates. Why these differential ontogenesis? Why this free play where all forms are tested in all directions? Why does the selected 'better' one not be stabilized once and for all?

It is man who brings nature out of its indifference. The incredible and infinitely differentiated complexity of our world leaves really its indifference only starting from man. Eternally could be only an infinite undifferentiated identity. Something like an absolute 'same'. Such a thought however can be only a fiction. The fact of being able to think this conditional contradicts it at the same time. What would be indeed the being without the difference? Could the absolutely indifferent being be different from silence and even from nothing? But already there 'is' the question. The smallest possibility of the smallest questioning already forces the being to leave the indifference. Already is the speech. Already is the word which articulates differential significances differently. Already is not the indifferent 'same' one. Already the 'other' one rises. Already is the difference. With its double ontological and logical dramatic, one of gaping and a dissension, the other one of opening a plenitude. It exposes to go beyond. There is no hope without crossing of difference.

The indifference tends towards death. Dynamics is child of the difference. The stronger the difference, the stronger is the creating dynamics of life. Without difference, without potential difference, energy reaches its point zero and seals its mortality. This law is checked on all levels of human reality, from the most material to the most spiritual one.

Ontologically, there is a confrontation of two opposite dynamics. One centripetal, that of identity, unity, indifference… The other centrifugal, that of difference, multiplicity and the urgency to take part…

Man is often allured by the difference, but more often he still fears it. When it takes the face of the strange one, of the unknown or the catastrophe. Worrying, threatening or disconcerting. The meeting of difference is however the great chance of the man, even if it is ambiguous. Actually difference can take the form of a force of constraint and of control. However a summit of humanity can arise through the embrace of a maximum of difference. The indifference in itself is sterile and unimportant. The indifference tends towards zero. There is no dynamics without difference. One can even affirm from the start that the stronger the difference, the stronger the creating dynamics of life.

Energy, every energy, the material one and the spiritual one, is child of the difference. It functions between an 'hot source' and a 'cold well'. Its dynamics is function of this potential difference. The greater the difference the greater the energy. Indifference means the dead of energy and of life.

Mortal indifference. Without difference, without potential difference, energy reaches its zero point... and the death of bodies, souls and spirits. This law is checked on all the levels of the human condition, from the most material ones to the most spiritual. Even if, at the same time, we tend towards the indifference in its thousand forms of pacifism, of tolerance, of fraternization or non-violence...

However what would become of our world without the great differences between good and bad, between error and truth, between God and Nothing, between sacred and mundane, between sky and earth, between Justice and injustice, between sense and nonsense, between necessity and creation, between relative and absolute, between immanence and transcendence, between reality and ideal, between what is and what must be, between freedom and oppression, between sin and grace…?

Such a dynamics finds its reason through the systemic approach of the potential difference between an hot source and a cold well.

There is no value which does not basically require difference. What would be, indeed, Good in itself, Truth in itself, Beauty in itself, the Justice in itself… if there were no opposite an antagonistic agitator, the evil one, the untrue one, the ugly one, the unjust one? In the fault between the 'same' and the 'other' opens the space of the difference, that is the space of a new nature and the chance of a new world which we can also call 'culture'.

The incredible complexity of our world so infinitely differentiated leaves strictly speaking its indifference and emerges really only with the sudden appearance of man. The human reality is thus in exodus through the difference.

The meeting of difference is an extraordinary chance. But an ambiguous chance! The difference, indeed, can meet in extraordinary fecundity. It can also be under the sign of force and kill. This is, alas!, its fatal natural slope against which the humanized human has to show and act the difference.

Dialectics. Dia-logos. The logos in its crossing. A difference to be faced. A unit to be conquered. Dialectics go right through human specificity, like its deep dynamics. Not just a moment of a process.

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