File 01: Laughing at the Word “Two”
Seeing beyond the ‘Other’ in a world that insists on twos
Laughing at the word “two”
Only
The Illumined One
Who keeps
Seducing the formless into form
Had the charm to win my heart.
Only a Perfect One
Who is always
Laughing at the word
Two
Can make you know
Of
Love.
— Hafiz
I open with this poem from the Sufi mystic Hafiz because the line “laughing at the word Two” expresses what lies at the heart of Kaleido: there is no such thing as the Other.
The Other is a fiction, an idea conjured to justify control and domination.
But humanity is so entangled in a dualist mindset that separates and ranks different forms of life. It’s why there are wars between groups of people, and against other expressions of Nature. Yes, there are external differences between people, animals, rivers, fungi, but no hierarchical ones. Everything holds equal value within the whole.
Future progress relies on recognising this truth. Yet dualist thinking continues to root itself ever deeper in the forest of our culture.
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