C. C. Elian

Positively Negative


Partial transliteration -

Artgument:

Proposition: the adjectivate use of the words “positive” and “negative” to denote polarized human values casts a concomitant qualitative association onto complementary existential structural elements, that are by their nature qualitatively neutral. The Chinese concepts of yin and yang capture the complementary nature of what are in English, “negative” and “positive”, respectively. Given that there can be no occupation of space without emptiness, no sense of heat without cold, no sense of dry without wet, each state needs its opposite. That “negative”, in Western languages, takes on an unfavorable quality, unfairly associates female energies with disfavor, and unfairly associates male energies with favor. As pure structures, negative or positive can only be determined on a case by case basis – lest one posit that all things positive are by virture of their actual existence good, and all things negative, are by their absence, deficient. Yet the negative of a disease is favorable, and the positive of one, its opposite. The universal need for both these mutually defining structures ought to preclude their use as values. The current qualitative use of positive and negative reflects the bias of yang against yin. The discontinuation of their use as qualifiers and their use as pure quantifiers ought to reinstate the neutral and complementary natures of both positive and negative. In their stead, genuine qualifiers can better fulfill the task.

(The remaining text contains dictionary definitions of the following words:
positive, negative, yin, yang, value, and structure.)


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