Learning opposites

As babies, already, we learn to tell opposites apart: close – near, up – down, dark – light, involving – excluding, …

Some opposites are more difficult to learn: left – right, supportive – damaging,   these more difficult ones need more life experience to be learned. They are not inherently incompatible binary relationships. 

For example, something that’s to the left for you, is to the right for a person who is standing in front of you facing you. Something can be a little bit more, or a little bit less, to the right. And something that’s doing damage to you, might have something in it that’s to your benefit.