The Illusion of Balance

What is balance? Though there are many definitions of the word, one of them as a noun is "equipoise between contrasting, opposing, or interacting elements." If you ever thought of balance, you might have thought about falling off a beam, being overworked in your personal life, or something of other sorts. And all of these are very valid thoughts and opinions.

But now, let's consider balance in a real-world context. In the blurb of this blog, I brought up three examples.

In the case of the honors student, they may appear to be doing fine at the surface and staying on top of rigorous coursework. However, beneath the surface, they are not the optimistic, calm person you see at school - they are struggling immensely with their mental health, their work-life balance is nonexistent, and they deal with private feelings of loneliness.

In the case of American suburbia, they are generally unwalkable and isolating (though the former has improved in certain areas). Though the balance of houses, lawns, and sidewalks with trees may appear satisfying and nice, suburbs are actually terrible for the environment. This supposed harmony between human development and nature is far from harmonious in reality, and the empty parking lots are certainly not an efficient use of the land.

As for the fringe argument, there's the logical fallacy known as a false balance. For instance, imagine an expert on the Napoleonic Wars debating a 14 year-old who's read a snippet about it for 15 minutes. Sure, the 14 year-old might have learned something, but these arguments are far from the same in value.

In all of these examples, there is balance on the surface, but not beneath. The honors student has no balance in their life, suburbia is not an environmentally harmonious relationship, the arguments aren't really balanced in terms of merit, you get the point.

We all know that it is no surprise that humans are generally prone to misperception of the world and people around them. We often don't just judge others poorly, but we also misperceive the subconscious messages about the world around us and what see around us on a daily basis.

Balance isn't a truly 50/50 amount - that's a further misconception. Rather, imagine this scenario: someone is practicing a speech for an awards ceremony and getting feedback from peers. If the speech was really good with only minor issues, 50/50 feedback wouldn't exactly do it justice. If the speech was absolutely terrible, 50/50 feedback still wouldn't do it justice either.

Point being, true balance is proportional to the value of whatever is being analyzed. Just as the flat-earther is completely clueless compared to the climate scientist, the perception of balance that we have as some even-split thing is completely flawed when you really look at it.

I urge all of us to apply the great lessons we get out of the best things that we read (I'm terrible at it myself, but that's besides the point). Consider your perception of what's around you. Is the dispute really on both sides to blame if one person is clearly the instigator? Is the balance in your own life fulfilling? Is the highway you drove on really a benefit to your life, or perhaps yet another insult to the environment? Now, that's not to say any of your current perceptions are completely wrong or without merit. However, it never hurts to think logically about what surrounds you and yourself without it getting toxic. So, I encourage us all to be truly balanced - not a false balance, not a pseudo-balance, but a balance that makes us think as critically and reasonably as we possibly can.