Balancing the books

Philosophy Forums Philosophy
1

In thinking about this, it seems to me that in a very real
way, what we humans do, is an attempt to ‘‘balance the books’’
and by that, I mean that much of religion and philosophy
and politics is an attempt to bring balance to existence…

For example, let us take the bible… we have the original story
of Adam and Eve… We were living in Eden, a utopia,
a paradise, and by our own actions, by eating the apple, we
were tossed out of paradise… we can think about his story
as one of balancing the books… we live in paradise,
by eating the apple, from the tree of knowledge no less,
we are punished by being evicted out of Eden…
the act of ‘‘evil’’, of eating the apple, must be punished
and punishment is, by its very nature, is balancing the books…
and the two facets, good and evil, are two aspects
of the books… The ancient Egyptians even used a scale
to work out this balance… it was called the ‘‘Scales of Truth’’
where the Anubis ‘‘weighed’’ a deceased’s heart against the
feather of ''Ma’at (truth and justice) to determine the
worthiness for the afterlife… a lighter heart meant passage
to paradise, a heavy heart meant passage to consumption
by the monster Ammit, condemning the soul to oblivion…
This is just one attempt at balancing the books within
a religion… and Adam and Eve being judged by god
is another attempt to balance the books…

The Buddhists idea of achieving enlightenment is another
attempt to balance the books… for suffering and pain get
balanced out by achieving enlightenment… there is no
longer any suffering and pain by the act of Nirvana…
in which Karma, which is just another form of balancing
the books, do good and be rewarded, do evil and return
to become another animal… virtually all religions are about
balancing the books…The Christians hold this balance by
one obeying the laws of god… obey, be good and one goes to heaven
and be evil, disobey god and go to hell… this is balance…
and when we see people, like IQ45 committing evil, we
hope for justice on him and by that justice, we can reach some
sort of balance… goodness gets rewarded and evil gets punished…
but this modern age in which we no longer believe, means that
the old fashion idea of god punishing the wicked, no longer
holds, so when we see evil, ICE/SS for example, how are we
going to balance the books when we see ICE/SS attacking innocents
and sending 5 year old children to a concentration camp… how
do we balance that evil with some punishment for the evildoers?
That is part of the malaise of modern times, we no longer see
the evil, the wicked being punished, the books are no longer
being balanced with evil being punished…as far as we can tell,
there doesn’t seem to be any punishment for being evil
and those who are good are being punished far more
than those who actually commit evil… and this violates
our understanding of existence…how is justice
being served when the evil prospers and the good get
punished? Where is the balancing of the books in our modern
age?

and we see this in terms of era’s too… the balancing of the books…
we see how balance was achieved until the various revolutions
of the modern age… then we saw the first revolution which
was the scientific revolution, then we saw the revolution caused
by the many voyages of discovery that lasted from Columbus
to Dr. Livingston… with each revolution, there changed the idea
of balance… for each revolution was another attempt to balance
the books… we see the scientific and political and economic
and social revolution of the last 500 years, as being aspects of
achieving balance…

for example, in the U.S, there have been various ‘‘Great Awakening’’
the first great Awakening came in the U.S beginning in the 1730’s,
let us think about this time period… I would suggest that this
Awakening, is a response to the scientific knowledge of
Newton… and thereafter came several different ‘‘Great
Awakenings’’ and each one was driven by outside influences,
the Enlightenment for example, in the second ‘‘Great Awakening’’
which came roughly from 1800 to 1840…

These Awakenings are a response, an attempt to balance the books,
from events like the Enlightenment and the rise of abolitionism…
or said another way, these Awakenings are a conservative
attempt to hold onto the old ways, the ways before the revolutions…
for example, both the American revolution and the French
revolutions created a new liberal stance and part of balancing
the books, was to deny or return to the old ways, before the
liberalism that created America and its values and institutions…
for every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction…
and with the rise of liberalism, came the opposite reaction…
the rise of conservativism and the various ‘‘Great Awakenings’’

We can see history and the events within history, as attempts
to balance the books, as it were…and we can see the modern
conservatives act and react to our modern liberals age, by
aggressively attacking what they perceive as ‘‘liberal’’ idea’s,
hence the attacks on ‘‘WOKE’’ and various institutions seen
as liberal, the media, movies, government… and what of
ICE/SS? That too is another reaction to events, for example,
the violence towards immigrants, and minorities, that
is favored by the right wing, is an attempt to balance
the books, the conservatives way… but the problem is that
conservatives really don’t understand the idea of ‘‘cause and effect’’ …
if there is a job loss, it must be the immigrants, but the reality
is that job losses are really about the CEO’S and their attempt
to increase their bonus checks… it has nothing to do with
immigrants taking natives jobs, because the jobs the immigrants
can get, aren’t jobs the natives want in any case… bussing tables,
picking crops in the field, working in factories, we have two factors
involved here, one is that immigrants can get paid less than natives,
and two, the natives don’t want those jobs anyway…
conservatives think that by removing immigrants that in some
fashion, ‘‘regular’’ Americans will have better jobs, but immigrants
don’t fill those jobs… computer jobs or business work, immigrants
don’t do those jobs… that one of the reasons for the ‘‘war on immigrants’’
a pretend attempt to recover jobs… but this attempt to balance
the books, is it were, is an failed attempt because it doesn’t
attack the reasons for immigrants getting jobs in America,
that companies and CEO’S, are trying to increase their
profits, that is the driver of America’s need for cheap labor…
but you don’t hear the right complain about massive corporate
profits, which comes on the backs of its workers…all profits
must come from the stealing of the labor of the workers…
exactly as Marx said over 150 years ago…

or said another way, that the entire concept of Justice is
basically, a concept of balancing the books…
good is rewarded and evil punished… but we don’t see
that going on today… we see evil rewarded and the good punished…
and we see this in all aspects of our life today… politically,
socially, economically, and philosophically… so, the question
becomes one of, how do we balance the books in modern day
America?

Kropotkin

2

Isms and ideologies are an attempt at ‘‘balancing the books’’
as is philosophy and economics and science…
Balancing the books isn’t just an religious idea but an
idea that, in some very basic ways, is the heart of the
human experience… how do we go about ‘‘balancing
the books’’ maybe the entire point of political discourse
of late… the attacks on immigrants is an attempt
at ‘‘balancing the books’’ but it is the wrong way to
‘‘balance the books’’ in America today…for it misses
the real cause of our unbalanced America today…
The search for profits/money, that is what has pushed
America out of balance… but the old idea of religion
as a means of restoring balance, that has failed…
for how do we ‘‘balance the books’’ in regards to ethics
and morality in this age of a ‘‘no god universe’’
does science like evolution and modern physics,
does that allow us to ‘‘balance the books’’ within
the state or the society? Not at all… for within scientific
facts, like for example, the Earth is 93 million miles from the Sun…
how does that balance anything in morality or ethics?
or even within other aspects of human existence?
if a fact needs context for it to make sense, it isn’t
about balance, but about something else…
medicine for example is about keeping balance within
our own bodies…but what about such concepts as
being ‘‘soul sick?’’… being ‘‘soul sick’’ is really
the result of the soul being out of balance…
where evil seems to make more sense than good,
because we can’t see evil being punished today…
evil succeeds and good fails is basically the modern
day mantra… so, the question becomes, how do
we restore balance to our own souls?

Kropotkin

3

let us look at other examples of ‘‘balancing the books’’

The declaration of Independence, is one such example,
the declaration that ‘‘all men are created equal’’ is one
such example of ‘‘balancing the books’’ and the modern
day attempt by the right to end this idea, politically, socially,
economically, are all attempts to balance this statement…

‘‘all men are created equal’’

and the basic point of the right is that by denying the concept
of ‘‘all men are created equal’’ they balance out or create
something that I have alluded to before, the ‘‘US VS THEM’’
solution…if ‘‘all men are created equal’’ that means that
by being equal, we are equal in our actions and reactions to others…
that some people are evil, that is a given within any state/society…
but if all men are created equal, that means that within that state/
society, all men are also, potentially evil… or even are evil…
we cannot go around thinking we are evil… and yet, the very
statement that ‘‘all men are created equal’’ suggests that evil
can exists within any man, evil is not done by the evil, but by
all of us… given the statement, ‘‘all men are created equal’’
people try to escape that by denying that ‘‘all men are created equal’’
hence the modern attempt to paint whites as superior, because if
‘‘all men are created equal’’ that would suggests that no one is
either superior or inferior… as much as our ego’s want to
proclaim our own superiority, we cannot given the declaration
of ‘‘all men are created equal’’’ thus we are forced, in order
to keep on the false belief that some are superior and some inferior,
we ignore, or even worse, deny that ‘‘all men are created equal’’
to ensure our own egos and beliefs are held to be true…
we cannot hold to our own superiority if ‘‘all men are created equal’’
if the Jews are denied and blacks are denied equality, then
we can claim to be superiority…the brain dead attacks on
the Jews is simply an attempt to provide us with some sort of
superiority… the Jewish conspiracy theories are nothing more
than an attempt to prove to ourselves, that we are in some
fashion, superior to the Jews…to deny the declaration’s
statement that, ‘‘all men are created equal’’ to proclaim
the inferiority of some, is to claim for the superiority of others…
hence the attacks on Jews, the immigrants, the blacks,
minorities, is an attempt to make us feel better about
ourselves, to deny that ‘‘all men are created equal’’
is about boosting our own ego’s…and nothing to do with
reality… we tear down others to make ourselves feel good
about ourselves, that is really what is happening with those
who create a false ‘‘US vs THEM’’ drama…
it is an attempt to deny the declaration by denying
equality to others… which is to say, if all men are equal
and some men are evil, I could be evil… and heaven
forbid we are actually honest with ourselves…
that I am equal to others, also means I am, and have
been the past, ‘‘evil’’ as well as being good, as well
as being indifferent to either good or evil…
if ‘‘all men are created equal’’ then anything is possible…
I could be good or evil or somewhere in between…
the very statement that ‘‘all men are created equal’’
because it is true, is what the conservative fights against
today because it suggests that we are in fact, very capable
of evil, or we could engage with good, given we are equal,
both are equally possible…

and that is the battle today… accepting the fact that we are,
in fact, capable of both evil and good, in equal parts…
and conservatives’ ego cannot handle that… they must
maintain and hold to the fiction that they are in fact, one of
the good guys… but ego won’t let them see the reality…
which is that we are, both good and evil, and we can choose
to be one or the other or both… it is that choice that comes
from believing that ‘‘all men are created equal’’

What choice will you make? without the US VS THEM,
and given the clause that ‘‘all men are created equal’’
which is a choice… and people hate making such moral
choices, because quite often, they are wrong…
what choice have you made?

if the statement, ‘‘all men are created equal’’ is true, then
you must choose to be good or evil? and what is your choice?

Kropotkin

4

Seems to me it illustrates God’s mercy, because the sun and moon give light and give us sustenance in various ways. The moon is 400 times smaller than the sun yet 400 times closer thus it perfectly eclipses the sun, they both appear the same size in the sky - on average.

That can’t be attributed to science as it’s a mental construct that they appear the same size. The same physical size could, perhaps, be attributed to natural law (physics). Not the same apparent size though, that’s beyond science.

Can l just say, l don’t know if you are American but you seem so, and l hate to say this but l think Americans live in a clinical bubble, like Israelis. American Christianity is sanitised, ahistorical, and so the non-Christians (especially Muslims) are just unspeakable savages. There is no backstory to these sanitised “facts” that form their national identity, the Atlantic Ocean acts as a firewall. The backstory is completely assembled in-house, within USA.

So, these imbalances and counter-actions you speak of, feel imagined to me. Sure there are movements and countermovements. However, the world is predicated on injustice overall, and that injustice is probably growing. You don’t see it all my friend. You will have pretty good labour laws, minimum wage. You can afford to keep a prison population, and give them crayons, vocational courses, televisions. You can redress your imabalances. In other lands, far out of mind, people live hard lives, to you impossible lives, just so you can have your ribbons and bows.

1 Like
5

The prophetic visions of Daniel and John foretell a period of moral darkness and moral decline.

This is not a cosmic secret. The spirit of anarchy is permeating all nations.

6

balance… holding balance seems to me is the key…
but another way of looking at it is equilibrium…
to put it in math terms… 1 + 1 = 2… this equation,
is balanced… it is equal… but let us try this:

1 + 1 + 1 = 2…

what is wrong with this equation? it is unbalanced,
not equal… and for anything to work, a system for example,
it must be balanced for any system to work… an unbalanced system
will fail, maybe not today or maybe not tomorrow, but it will fail because
any unbalanced system, by being unbalanced, will eventually cause it
own failure… any system to work, must have and maintain its balance…
the idea of good and evil, for the system to maintain, good and evil
must balance… good = evil… and too much on either side, and the
system goes unbalanced…

Our current system under IQ45 is a failure because it unbalances the
system…the weight of the system is now on the evil side, and not
enough balance on the good side…

When I was younger, I read a lot of Colin Wilson…
and much of what he wrote about, especially when he was younger,
was about the evil that men do… he wrote about the underside of
existence, the murderers, the torturers, the sadist, the Raskolikov’s of
the world… this is the side that conservatives worry themselves about…
that conservatives believe in the Machiavellian idea that all men are born
evil… that a person, just as a leopard, cannot change their spot,
an evil person cannot change who they are… you don’t see
a conservative write about the good of the world, the beauty of
existence, the music that is greatness… Mozart for example,
you don’t hear conservatives praise the positive expressions
of the world, in its music, it its poetry, in its novels and plays…
there is much good in the world…but you wouldn’t know
it from conservatives… there is great joy and beauty and
love in the world… according to the conservatives, there is only
great evil in the world, never good…

and in their desire to make everything evil, they unbalance the world…
the conservatives conspiracy theories, the hatred of the Jews, their
hatred/fear of education, voting, blacks, health care, the declaration
of Independence, gays, trans, reason, science, minorities, love,
immigrants, the law, the court system, institutions like the State
Department… and so on and so forth… to truly list the conservatives
hate and fear, that would take days and changes quite often depending
on the new good is… and they take the opposite path/side…

and in engaging in their various hates/fears, they have unbalanced
the system…for where in their many hatreds, does the positive lie?
where is love and beauty and hope and charity and optimism and
curosity… to name a few goods, that conservatives never acknowledge
or actively blame for the world’s evil… for example, in Calvinist Geneva,
there were laws against dancing, gambling, swearing, drinking, the
alleged vices of a people… the emphasis was on keeping ‘‘morality’’
pure… and yet, what he did in effect was to create the first police state…
Neighbor spied on Neighbor and often denounced that neighbor as
being ‘‘immoral’’ when the emphasis was on finding one evil’s, as in
watching our neighbors for signs of ‘‘immorality’’ was to deny
any possibility for good…for singing and being joyful were often seen
as possible acts of the devil… where was the balance if most behavior
was seen as being evil… on the negative side… and there was no positive
side…

we can see this side of balance in the era’s of history…
we have the traditional viewpoint which was monarchy,
the church, the state… a viewpoint that was from the 1000 years
of the medieval world…ever wonder why the Medieval world
lasted so long? I would guess its because it was unbalanced,
its focus was on the negative of human beings, not the positive…
and part of what broke the Middle Ages was the return of the
positive… the rise of the modern world began when the Crusades
began… the Crusades showed Europe that there was another way
to view existence, to begin to see the beauty of the world, not
the evil of the world…and also, from the Crusades came another
view, which is that of the Ancient Greeks… for the first time,
the writings of many of the Greeks became available, Plato
and Aristotle for example, many of their books became available in
the west… and within much of Aristotle, was a new idea,
a new viewpoint, one that was positive, one where nature was good,
one where we could actually learn something positive from the Greeks,
which was a nice change of pace from the downbeat, heavy weight of
negativity that was the Medieval period… periods of optimism and
positivity does not happen very often in history…
The Greeks were one such time period, the Renaissance was another…
and after Calvin Geneva, came both the American Revolution and
the French revolution which was times of positive optimism…
Read both the declaration and the Constitution and we can see
positive within them… and they were optimist because they
were Enlightenment documents…

and after the Enlightenment, came the next era, which was
the Romantic period… which is the opposite of the Enlightenment,
which is to say, they balanced each other out…
and today, we are still being held by a strange mixture of the two,
the Enlightenment and the Romantic… conservativism/right wing
faith is part of the Romantic… Nazi Germany was very much part of
the Romantic period… look at what the Nazi’s worshiped…
The Medieval period and that is strictly part of the Romantics
worship… The Romantic period was a flat out worship of
the Medieval age…and the Nazi’s also worship this time period…
as do many modern conservatives…

whereas liberals have faith in science and reason, not faith…
thus Liberals hold to the Enlightenment period, and continue to do
so… and liberals hold to science and history and philosophy…
all ideas hated by conservatives…

and here is where our modern times fit in… that conservatives
clearly have destroyed the balance that has governed our times…
but that is the entire history of the 20th century… where the balance
between the two forces, good and evil, has been destroyed…
there must be equal parts good with equal parts evil… and too
much weight on one side or the other, causes an imbalance that
threatens to destabilize the state/society… we must have balance
in order to create a stable society/state…
and that is part of the malaise of our times, that we have emphasis
evil over good, thus making the equation unstable…

we must have balanced or risk everything…I would
suggest that certain time periods exists because they
are attempts to bring back the equation, the stability that
allows a society to move forward… I would suggests
that the 1960’s happened because that is a path toward
bringing back balance in our state/society…
and that every action since then, the wars, the war on drugs,
the ongoing state violence, those are attempts to bring back
balance into the state/society…

think of our times, the battles between the right and left,
as attempts to bring balance back into the state/society…

and is the modern MAGA attempt to bring back balance going to work?
of course not, because the attempt itself by MAGA is unbalanced,
it is far too much on the side of the negative, and it emphasizes
the negative of existence, all the while forgetting the balance
in which there is good, beauty, love, hope, honesty, light…
things you wouldn’t know existed in the MAGA world…

balance… it is the dream we must try to reach in order
to bring about a stronger, safter society/state…

Kropotkin