We need balance in life, and in how we see life. Balance is essential to a healthy and well-ordered life.
It is the same with people as it is with riding a bike. Only when moving can one comfortably maintain one’s balance. [Albert Einstein]
The delicate balance of mentoring someone is not creating them in your own image, but giving them the opportunity to create themselves. [attributed to Steven Spielberg]
My journey has always been the balance between chaos and order. [attributed to Philippe Petit]
To gain another perspective on human values, and life, consider the issue of balance. Life is like riding a bicycle: if we lose our balance, then we fall off. The consequences can range from a scraped knee to utter calamity.
Balance implies a relationship, or set of relationships between and among the various elements and features in and of our lives. It can be dominated or influenced by context. Each aspect of balance will occupy its own space and time in our lives.
This chapter raises planes of analysis in addition to those explored in other chapters.
Internal/cognitive (soul, spirit, meaning) versus external/active (reason, courage, Faith) versus mixed (motivation, purpose);
Tangible versus symbolic: this plane is especially difficult to pin down, because all of our values are symbolic, but to the extent that they are expressed in action, they are relatively more tangible; on the other hand, technologies such as real-time MRI of the brain now allow us to see the tangible side of thoughts and feelings.
Static versus dynamic, though a strong case can be made that all of our values are dynamic, both in their underlying internal character, and as we express them. On the other hand, people who are highly consistent in their values could be said to be relatively more static than those whose values, thoughts, feelings, and actions change more noticeably over time.
There are two kinds of balance: psychological balance and life balance.
Flexibility can never be an unalloyed good. There is such a thing as being too flexible, such as being so open-minded that your brains fall out, or compromising with evil in such a way that it is encouraged and empowered. Chamberlain’s appeasement of Hitler is a case in point. Moral flexibility can always be assessed in comparison with and in contrast to scrupulousness. Whether we can ethically compromise our scruples depends on how broad a view we take of them, and how relatively absolute they are. This is the central problem of the lifeboat dilemma: under what circumstances should an innocent person’s life be sacrificed? The main challenges for most people are to see the matter broadly enough (1) to recognize that any course of action or inaction will affect everyone on the lifeboat, and (2) to see the consequences of decisions broadly enough so that they honor everyone’s intrinsic worth, not only the person who by outward appearances is most directly and most profoundly affected. In every dynamic of flexibility-scrupulousness, an outward manifestation is always present. We can also consider and address flexibility in several additional ways, all of which can be considered in the flexible-scrupulous dynamic:
Ideals versus practicality: Ideals relate to a desired state of affairs, usually one that does not (yet) exist. Practicality is a strategy for tempering our ideals, of necessity, to consider the overarching reality that is greater than the moral actor-protagonist. Practicality is useful when it helps us advance our ideals. An example is the Bernie Sanders Presidential candidacy in the United States. Sanders’ supporters argued that voters should not compromise their ideals. However, many people whose hearts were with Sanders did not support his election: they recognized that he was not likely to win, and that even if he did win, his Presidency would compromise their and his long-term ideals. Bernie Sanders could not have gotten his legislative proposals enacted without Congressional support. Most of his major proposals did not have enough support to win enactment. Meanwhile, voters tend to blame the party of the sitting President when they think that the country is on the wrong track. Therefore, the most likely outcome of a Sanders presidency would have been the loss of Congressional power in the midterm elections, with potentially disastrous consequences for the Sanders movement. (Think of how Jimmy Carter tried to take on big oil and other monied interests, lost those battles, and came to be seen as a weak President; and how the election of Ronald Reagan followed, with long-term consequences inimical to Carter’s ideals, such as treating the fossil fuel issue as the moral equivalent of war.) This illustrates the point that political movements must be built from the ground up, and will fail if they are not. An exception is dictatorships, but even there, loss of support will eventually cause the regime to collapse. However, there is evidence that Sanders’ candidacy advanced his ideals, but only because he did not win. How is this different from Chamberlain’s appeasement of Hitler: Hitler might have been stopped with a united Europe but given the political realities in the United States during Carter’s presidency, there was no realistic chance of stopping big oil in the ways that Carter wanted to do. People wanted cheap oil, and were not inclined to think first about their grandchildren. The rise of the far right in the United States can well be analyzed as a matter of which side saw the practical realities more clearly; both sides had their ideals, though many people would not call a desire for power and control and ideal (it is, because it pertains to what people on the far right conceive of as a desirable state of affairs). The balance between ideals and practicality is complicated and tricky.
Taking risks versus being cautious: Life presents us with choices between taking risks and being cautious, routinely, or we could say constantly. A risk may be external (e.g., taking out a loan to open a business) or internal (e.g., the emotional investment someone makes in a romantic relationship, which can be independent of and vastly different from the external actions associated with that investment). It may be a large risk or a small one. Sometimes, caution is the greater risk, such as when a person decides not to undergo surgery; however, that decision is cautious only as it relates to the risks of surgery, not as it relates to treatment for cancer. Sometimes, as in the example of cancer surgery, action can be more cautious than inaction.
Being stable/constant versus changing (displaying dynamism): We are constantly faced with choices to remain the same or change. A change can be internal, such as changing one’s mind; or external, such as divorcing a spouse. However, people who change their minds are likely to change their actions too; and people who file for divorce churn inside before, during, and after the filing. People assess how well their situation and strategies suit them, and decide to change or not based on the issues involved, their life consequences (including the attendant risks that come with each course of action), issues of space (should someone run for board of education, or for President of the United States?) and time (is changing jobs worth it, when someone has only one year left until retirement?)
Meaning: What constitutes a healthy balance in someone’s life is a function of the meaning that person attaches to the various elements in life. A professional musician may be balanced in spending three hours per day practicing. Probably this would be an excessive amount of time for a high school band member with no musical aspirations beyond the high school band. Most professional musicians probably would consider eight hours of practice per day to be excessive but if a musician continued to improve by practicing for that long, then eight hours of practice per day could reflect a healthy balance, especially if the musician enjoyed it. After all, people routinely work for eight hours or more per day.
One person might consider devoting attention to a spouse for three hours per day to reflect an excellent life balance. Another person might be revulsed by that, seeing it as reflecting unhealthy dependence. Neither of them is necessarily right or wrong but the difference between two romantic partners in the meaning they attach to their relationship can be a troubling and in some cases a relationship-ending matter of contention. They do not want the same – or we might say compatible – balances in their lives.
A foodie might spend eight hours every day in the kitchen. If the time is spent cooking, that might reflect a balanced life, but if the foodie spends eight hours a day eating, that would reflect a life that is seriously out of balance – not because of the activity itself but because of the adverse effects of habitual overeating.
Young people incur hundreds of thousands of dollars in debt to obtain an advanced education. For some of them, the investment might be worth it; others may regret having made it.
How much time is someone best advised to spend exercising on an average day? How much time should be devoted to sleeping? How much time is a person best advised to spend on social media, or playing video games, if any? The answers will depend on where these activities fit into each person’s life, and the meaning they bring forth.
Work/play is a work-life issue but is presented as a separate category only because play is commonly seen as a distinction from work.
Activity/rest: Part II of this book is devoted entirely to active values. Chapter 5 of Part IV is devoted to restoration. When we think of values, we think mainly of the values described in Part II, but we spend much of our time restoring ourselves, including the time we spend sleeping.
Restoring/depleting: we spend much of our time exhausting ourselves. We work, study, exercise, and pursue goals. Restoration, which includes resting, relaxing, sleeping, and playing, offers a necessary antidote to that. This is another approach to the distinction between being active and resting.
Some people's idea of balance may be other people's idea of ridiculous. Commonly, propagandists promote an ideal in direct contravention to its expression.
In the 1920s the United States lived under a Constitutional Amendment that banned alcoholic beverages. Spurred by "temperance societies," this episode in history, ironically, exemplifies intemperance.
In the meantime, while some sang, the rest talked together tumultuously all at once; it was no longer anything but noise. Tholomyès intervened. "Let us not talk at random nor too fast," he exclaimed. "Let us reflect, if we wish to be brilliant. Too much improvisation empties the mind in a stupid way. Running beer gathers no froth. No haste, gentlemen. Let us mingle majesty with the feast. Let us eat with meditation; let us make haste slowly. Let us not hurry. Consider the springtime; if it makes haste, it is done for; that is to say, it gets frozen. Excess of zeal ruins peach-trees and apricot-trees. Excess of zeal kills the grace and the mirth of good dinners. No zeal, gentlemen! [Victor Hugo,Les Misérables (1862), Volume I – Fantine; Book Third – In the Year 1817, Chapter VII, “The Wisdom of Tholomyés”.]
At first his interest had been divided pretty equally between his biological work at the College and social and theological theorising, an employment which he took in deadly earnest. Of a night, when the big museum library was not open, he would sit on the bed of his room in Chelsea with his coat and a muffler on, and write out the lecture notes and revise his dissection memoranda, until Thorpe called him out by a whistle--the landlady objected to open the door to attic visitors--and then the two would go prowling about the shadowy, shiny, gas-lit streets, talking, very much in the fashion of the sample just given, of the God idea, and Righteousness, and Carlyle, and the Reorganisation of Society. And in the midst of it all Hill, arguing not only for Thorpe, but for the casual passer-by, would lose the thread of his argument glancing at some pretty painted face that looked meaningly at him as he passed. Science and Righteousness! But once or twice lately there had been signs that a third interest was creeping into his life, and he had found his attention wandering from the fate of the mesoblastic somites or the probable meaning of the blastopore, to the thought of the girl with the brown eyes who sat at the table before him. [H.G. Wells, “A Slip Under the Microscope” (1895).]
Tempering medieval justice:
Every city during the Middle Ages, and every city in France down to the time of Louis XII. had its places of asylum. These sanctuaries, in the midst of the deluge of penal and barbarous jurisdictions which inundated the city, were a species of islands which rose above the level of human justice. Every criminal who landed there was safe. There were in every suburb almost as many places of asylum as gallows. It was the abuse of impunity by the side of the abuse of punishment; two bad things which strove to correct each other. The palaces of the king, the hôtels of the princes, and especially churches, possessed the right of asylum. Sometimes a whole city which stood in need of being repeopled was temporarily created a place of refuge. Louis XI. made all Paris a refuge in 1467. [Victor Hugo, Notre-Dame de Paris, or,The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1831), Volume II, Book Ninth, Chapter II, “Hunchbacked, One Eyed, Lame”.]
Poetry
Loved a little, Worked a little…
Those were very fortunate people, Who considered Love an obligation, Or they just loved their task, I remained busy all my life, Loved a little, worked a little, Sometimes love was a snag in the way of my work, While sometimes duty didn’t allow me to love with passion, Ultimately I got upset of the situation, And left both my love and my work incomplete.
To my ears, twentieth century piano trios outside the lingering tradition of French romanticism do not convey as clear a sense of attentive listening as do their nineteenth century counterparts; they seem distracted by the concerns of their era. Still, they strike a scrupulous balance between the three instruments.
LPT is a ten-piece Afro-Cuban salsa band whose style could best be described as one of controlled energy. Though their rhythms drive forward consistently, they always remain controlled and balanced. Their albums include: “Se Quema el Mundo” (2021) (45’) and “Sin Parar” (2020) (40’).
SELF GLOBAL EMOTION THOUGHT ACTION VALUE CONVICTION ATTITUDE EVIL LEVEL 1 LEVEL 2 Self-respect Self-understanding Prudence LEVEL 3 LEVEL 4 CREATIVITY Self-love Faith in self SPIRITUALITY Spirituality Meaning Direction Purpose CLOSE RELATIONSHIPS WITH OTHER PEOPLE GLOBAL EMOTION THOUGHT ACTION VALUE CONVICTION ATTITUDE EVIL LEVEL 1 LEVEL 2 Respect Understanding Responsibility LEVEL 3 Kindliness Appreciation Service Generosity LEVEL 4 Cherishing… Read More
Propaganda is information of a biased or misleading nature, or misinformation, used to promote a cause or point of view. It is usually disseminated by someone seeking to promote a self-interest without regard to the whole, and therefore fits within Niebuhr’s definition of evil. As the means of disseminating information and misinformation have become more complex, the means of spreading… Read More
In relation to the self: Habits and Practices (static) – Change (dynamic) In relation to others, near and intimate relationships: Tradition (static) – Challenging Conventions (dynamic) In relation to others, near and intimate relationships: Social Norms (static) – Challenging Conventions
DEFERENTIAL VALUES in Relation to Other People (Week 6) GLOBAL EMOTION THOUGHT ACTION VALUE CONVICTION ATTITUDE Avoiding Harm Non-malevolence Acknowleding the Other’s Humanity Restraining Fairness Common Ground Tolerance
DEFERENTIAL VALUES in Relation to the Material World (Week 5) GLOBAL EMOTION THOUGHT ACTION ATTITUDE Humility Modesty Skepticism Forbearing Patience Equanimity Mindfulness
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