Balance

A couple things this week got me thinking... they made me make some observations about how the world works. The first thing was a joke I got from my Cousin which is as fallows:

Once upon a time in the Kingdom of Heaven, God was missing for six days. Eventually, Michael the archangel found him, resting on the seventh day. He inquired of God, "Where have you been?"

God sighed a deep sigh of satisfaction and proudly pointed downwards through the clouds, "Look Michael, look what I've made." Archangel Michael looked puzzled and said, "What is it?"

"It's a planet," replied God, "and I've put Life on it. I'm going to call it Earth and it's going to be a great place of balance." "Balance?", inquired Michael, still confused.

God explained, pointing to different parts of earth, "For example, Northern Europe will be a place of great opportunity and wealth while Southern Europe is going to be poor; the Middle East over there will be a hot spot" God continued, pointing to different countries "This country will be extremely hot and arid while this one will be very cold and covered in ice."

The Archangel, impressed by God's work, then pointed to a large land mass and said, "What's that one?"

"Ah," said God. "That's Wisconsin, the most glorious place on earth. You'll notice that it is made in the fashion of my hand, the Hand of God. There are beautiful lakes, rivers, sunsets and rolling hills. The people from Wisconsin are going to be modest, intelligent and humorous and they are going to be found traveling the world. They will be extremely sociable, hard working and high achieving, and they will be known throughout the world as diplomats and carriers of peace."

Michael gasped in wonder and admiration but then proclaimed, "What about balance, God?" "You said there would be balance!"

God replied wisely, "Wait until you see the idiots I'm putting around them in Minnesota, Michigan, Illinois and Iowa."

Being from Wisconsin, I thought this was hilarious but it did point out something important about society: its polar nature. The second excerpt that I read emphasized the true importance of this seemingly mundane observation. The excerpt came from a document telling an origin story of Ethiopian Christianity; the story is called the Kebra Negast and the excerpt goes as such:

"That which fools heap up the wise consume. And because of the wickedness of those who do evil the righteous are praised; and because of the wicked acts of fools the wise are beloved."

The Kebra Negast made me realize that the world isn't arbitrarily full of opposites, in order for one thing to exist, there needs to a contrary. This necessary polarity is a driving force that I take for granted far too often. In order for there to be evil there must be good, in order for their to be hot there must be cold, in order for there to be an up there needs to be a down, in order for a person to be right another must be wrong, and in order for me to enjoy my large meal... someone else must starve. Without one thing, there is nothing to compare the other one to and that thing would not exist. If we took away the one sensation of temperature (warm/hot), there is only cold and therefore we would not measure temperature; or if we only took away the temperatures that we would consider warm, there would be left a spectrum of cold, the highest temperature of which we would call warm. We would call 40 degrees Fahrenheit hot because it isn't near as cold as 2 degrees Fahrenheit.


Admittedly, not everything is as black and white as this observation makes it seem, but that doesn't mean that it doesn't, to some degree, let one determine some motivations. What I'm saying is this: if one has in mind that everything that they think of has, in their mind, been compared/contrasted with something else (most likely unconsciously), then they can try to determine what experience they were using to come to that conclusion. In theory one could learn a great deal about themselves through exploring the motives that drive their everyday actions/words.


Once again, this goes back to my talk about construction of views; if one can consciously think about the frame from which they see the world, they can know more about themselves. If one can know ones self, they can apply that knowledge to the world around them, building on that foundation.