Question: If polarity is just the way humans are, why do we need to study it?

The short answer: For the same reason we need to know about gravity.

Cavemen don't need to know why an apple falls to the ground. They were probably happy sitting in a warm and dry place every once in a while. They didn't have to worry about tax returns or electricity bills.

Well, humans did choose to learn about gravity, and now we have eyeglasses, and you can have your infected appendix removed before it kills you in a painful way, and your baby stands a pretty good chance of surviving the first four years of her life — all because we know about the laws of physics, and a few other ones. We know how to perform surgery, how to store food, how to construct and fly a plane, how to use an mp3-player.

A society that knows about the laws of physics can improve its quality of life dramatically just by providing some physical comfort. We can have a hot bath in winter, and clean, fresh water in summer.

A society that knows some basics about human nature can improve life for its members just as dramatically.

Imagine no psychologists trying to apply a one-size-fits-all theory to a troubled youth, an angry female soldier returning from Iraq, or a burnt-out 50-year-old inner city high school teacher.

No teachers treating you as if you are retarded just because you are introverted — while everybody around you is active and assertive and outgoing.

No parent driving their daughter to consider suicide telling her "I wish you were more like your brother" and "You are too sensitive" — year after year.

No hissed "Oh men are all the same" from your frustrated mother because she will understand people well enough to put them, and herself, in categories based on their sex.

I didn't discover Paul Rosenfels until I was 27. Had I known about polarity at the age of 21, I certainly wouldn't have put most of my life on hold for years until "I have figured out the universe" and "understand exactly what the hell I am doing here". I might have learnt earlier to sometimes take advice from those seemingly annoying, scary, evil masculines. I might have developed healthy sleeping patterns earlier. I might have been less harsh with myself and my grandma might have worried about me less.

Just because gravity is the law a rock will stick to doesn't mean homo sapiens knew right away how to use the laws of physics. Nor does it mean we know it all as of 2008. Just because polarity is the way humans really work doesn't mean people actually recognize this. At the moment, the vast majority of people is cultivating very traditional, and harmful, ideas of what a girl or a boy should be like, and force these ideas onto the next generation. Most people do consider themselves finished products, psychologically, once they finish school.

Maybe only troubled, unconventional people will need to understand everything about psychology. After all, not everybody needs to understand all about quantum theory, either. Maybe the majority will only get some basics — but even this will have a dramatic effect on the way people treat each other, as families, or as strangers, or as workmates.

I hope we can reach a truce between conventional and creative people. That alone would stop a lot of wars in the classroom, and in family homes. I hope we will have smarter leaders who will be able to forsee the effect an action will have on humanity seven generations on, instead of following economical and political ideologies. I hope we will have parents and teachers and bosses who know what they are doing, instead of intensifying their efforts when their methods and ideas don't work.