Abusing balance: Power 101
Balance.
Balance is a quality instinctively known and felt. Your parents can remember when you sit-up with balance. They documented the day your head was under your control, in balance on the neck. Your first steps level your hold on the world as a traveler, as someone who can balance themselves.
You see balance visually in logos, and you have an estimation of how large an object on one side of a scale needs to be to balance its counter. Now, with a counter in mind, we begin to understand balance in a new way.
You know balance morally, though crudely at first. When we have siblings, we soon learn the words ‘that isn’t fair’. The much larger sibling wrestling and confining the smaller, it is most certainly out of balance.
We identify balance before we can comprehend the abstract meaning of ‘rights’ and liberty. Even without that extensive knowledge of justice and the odd karmic wheel it centers upon, we get our first response to the rules of balance.
“Not everything is fair.”
Suddenly, without much provocation, we experience our first moral outrage. It’s probably over candy or swing time, but that doesn’t detract from the experience. We feel, out of balance.
Our memory betrays us, only remembering time since we could balance our heads, our shoulders and smiles, only the time when things were balanced. We forget that we started, out of balance.
People expect balance. We, expect balance.
It seems, depending on the history, some people learn imbalance to their favor, while others only notice and observe the lack of balance. I hope enough people grow to understand balance for it’s simple shifting nature, and how that can be used. There are certainly enough people who grow to learn how to abuse this nature.
The most divisive are those in power. Anyone with power. Start big if you must. Presidents, governors, senators, CEO’s, manager’s and money holders understand balance. Most of their understanding of balance seems to be centered on making sure they are on neither end of a balance, but holding in their stead, a fulcrum.
A president takes a look at ‘both’ sides of the issue, a CEO balances stockholder’s with consumers and the rest continue with equal vision.
Fulcrums are never to be trusted. They rely on that early childhood memory of balance, the one that tells you it should be there. It stops you from wondering if ‘both’ sides of the issue should be all sides of the issue, if liberal and conservative shouldn’t be independent, if democrats and republicans are any real body of beliefs at all.
The balance of justice replicates the trend as well. One side must be right, the other wrong. I think even Rawls would agree the best justice is balanced on a large oddly shaped plane. Ever tried balancing a tray on one finger? The complex distribution of weight adds to the work of finding the appropriate center.
So, consequently, I find many more people excited to balance pool cues than cue balls. The difficulty of the sphere only encourages the easy acceptance of the pool cue. The balance is easily found and maintained. We become happy in a way that Pavlov’s dogs would understand.
Applications
I think government would be a give me, but maybe not.
Recently, on the Daily Show, John Avalon, author of Independent Nation : How the Vital Center Is Changing American Politics, pointed out the failing weakness of those of us who live in the center.
When issues come up, it’s the radicals who are the first to hit the streets. When we are approached on our feelings, the propaganda machine demands a solid answer.
After all, we are people of our convictions!… right? The notion that people might want to sit and think about it, defer to experts or, and heaven forbid, compromise on something is weak and yellow. It’s the appeal to the black and white in life.
In a nation that’s supposed to govern by the permission of the governed, who takes control when the governed demonstrate incapability? For a bonus point, what does it take to demonstrate capability in a capitalist country? Who are they? Lobbyists.
Thousands of groups who have the voice and money, or people willing to give them the money, you wish you had and they believe in every opinion you could possibly be offended by.
Those groups that fight for actual ’causes’ are probably in the right arena here. But most of these groups have agendas, continuing plot lines of ever adjusting ideals that are meant to brandish and award power from you to someone else.
World hunger is a cause, lobbying for prayer in school is an agenda.
One of them addresses the injustices of the basic human condition while the other addresses civil human rights. We are all human, we are not all religious, greedy, pregnant, parents, doctors, dentists, lawyers or any other subclass that must submit it is human first. So, you see, there are a lot of groups that function to serve themselves and I’m guessing only a handful that really worry about the human condition. Lobbyists eat your rights and fart loudly in the room where the smell of your semi-digested freedom lingers right in front of your face.
It’s all permissible, because every group that wants to lobby can. Everything is fair.
Everything is fair.