Why I think aiming for “balance” is a dumb argument.

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(Here's a master copy I did while in the atelier of Dostoyevsky On His Deathbed by Ivan Kramskoy.)

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Greetings fellow Steemians,

This has been one of those ideas I admit that I have played with and mulled over for many years.

There’s just something about it that rubs me the wrong way.

...You know what I think it is?

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The more and more I look within and observe the world and those around me, the more I see the dangers and harm this kind of “new age” thinking and terminology can cause. This type of false positivity is so scarily optimistic!

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But for the uninitiated, or for anybody that simply continues to believe in the idea that short term solutions can fix long term problems, I truly can understand the appeal in thinking this way.

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This idea or perspective in seeking to find this elusive “balance” flat out doesn’t work. It’s wrong.

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Before I really begin to untangle this idea and before anybody might get the misguided impression of this blog post by concluding that it had an air of pessimism or cynicism, in my defense I believe we would first have to establish what we define the term “balance” means?

And by doing so, would be to attempt to strike in the very heart of the matter! Which lies the very problem in the first place!

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One of the biggest things about it that bugs me is that ultimately relying on this kind of pre made terminology is weak and lazy. It’s not original, and therefore is the antithesis of REAL thinking in itself.

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Let alone that when we cease to pay attention to what our eyes and ears are telling us, we cease to be realists.

When we attempt force an ideology in place of reality itself, is a sure fire way to paving a road to hell. And whether or not we believe we’re realists, it doesn’t matter because we all have to contend with our own mortality!

..I kind of reminds me of that old Neil deGrasse Tyson thought in that science is beautiful in that truth can exist whether or not we believe it.

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To be perfectly blunt, I don’t think this “balance” exists.

Not within ourselves or even in the nature of the universe. Things are in constant motion, and any attempt to point out any kind of “peaceful stagnation” within any span of time is simply arbitrary.

..Just for the sake of argument, even if this “balance” existed (which it doesn’t), how could you rationally conclude that this would be achievable?

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..And even if it were achievable, how could you even say that you’d even want it??

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You wouldn’t. NOBODY would!!

To continue in thinking so is just a blatant denial of the existence of the shadow side of our being. Carl Jung discussed this idea on numerous occasions, and even Dostoyevsky wrote about this idea in such an eloquently powerful manner. This quote below is from his classic “Notes From the Underground”:

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…give [man] economic prosperity, such that he should have nothing else to do but sleep, eat cakes and busy himself with the continuation of his species, and even then out of sheer ingratitude, sheer spite, man would play you some nasty trick. He would even risk his cakes and would deliberately desire the most fatal rubbish, the most uneconomical absurdity, simply to introduce into all this positive good sense his fatal fantastic element. lt is just his fantastic dreams, his vulgar folly that he will desire to retain, simply in order to prove to himself […] that men still are men and not the keys of a piano, which the laws of nature threaten to control so completely that soon one will be able to desire nothing but by the calendar. And that is not all: even if man really were nothing but a piano-key, even if this were proved to him by natural science and mathematics, even then he would not become reasonable, but would purposely do something perverse out of simple ingratitude, simply to gain his point. (1.8.4)

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In many instances I have found those who cling to these unproductive ideals in their defense to be actually passive aggressive.

There is no doubt that humanity has this strange way in handling chaos. In simplistic terms, it’s a no brainer in that for example if we’re using something like a tool, that the less we know about it the further and further we’ll be in accomplishing our goal.

But for some reason, these grand and abstract ideas like achieving “balance”....people are perfectly content with keeping this “goal” massively large, vague and generalized; much like their own thinking processes. That somehow they can obtain some kind of solace in refraining from sculpting out their own goals, thoughts and perspectives with razor like precision.

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..Is it not possible that those who somehow believe that if they can keep something big, gray, undefined and monstrous to the point where you can’t point at it, that if and when they fail...then somehow they have deluded themselves into thinking that it’s okay and it’s not their fault that they failed? Therefore, they relinquished their own responsibility and cannot be held accountable of their actions?

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In considering the arguments of the greatest minds we’ve ever known, I would have to conclude that this appears to be the case.

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Thanks for reading Everyone!

-James Hansen

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