We live in a world and era that is very much out of balance. Imbalance causes problems and suffering. Balance is not some new age, air-fairy concept, it is the natural and proper state of all things in the universe. We need balance in all things, those within and those without, those big and those small. We need balance in the natural world and the man-made world. We need balance in our societies and in our own bodies.

When things are out of balance, they cannot function properly–be it a plant, a human body, or a society. If farm plants do not get the right balance of everything they need to grow, bear fruit and be healthy, then they will not be properly optimized (i.e., they will be out of balance) for consumption and nutrition, in turn putting those that consume them out of balance. If the air has too much pollution, then there will not be enough clean oxygen for us to breathe, negatively impacting our lungs and our ability to live and breathe  in health and balance. If society has too much poverty, misery and suffering, it will fall out of balance.

Some may believe that the social or man-made world does not require balance in the same way the natural world or human body does. That is not true. The social requires just as much balance, if not more so. Jean-Paul Sartre said that no man is an island. Whether we like it or not, we share this planet with billions of other human beings. Think of it like being on a ship full of people. If the majority of individuals are at the end or back of the ship, the ship’s weight will not be equally distrusted—it will be off balance—and it will capsize and sink. Have you ever been on an airplane and asked to change seats, only to have a flight attendant tell you okay, but you have to sit on this or that particular side because the weight has to be equally balanced or distributed. Why do you think they say that? Because if the weight is not properly distributed the plane could go down; just like that ship. The weight on the plane does not have to be completely equally distributed. But too much on one end, and not enough on the other, and the plane could go down. And no one on board wants that; not the people in first class or the people in coach. Everyone is on that plane together, and if it goes down, they all go down; no matter which seat or section or class one is seated in.

The same is true of the social or man-made world. But the elites (what many refer to as the 1 percent) of today—and probably throughout history—fail to realize this reality. While you can gate yourself off from the riff raff and build entire walls and cities exclusively for the those at the very top, eventually what happens at the bottom will impact those at the top. To illustrate this point let’s use the notion of the body politic, but in a different manner than it has traditionally been employed. The body politic is a medieval metaphor that likens a nation to a corporation, with a corporation being understood as a group of people acting as a single entity. This concept is often used in discussions of nations or nation states and the authority or sovereignty of monarchs and leaders (as the head of the corporation or body politic).

For our discussion, I use that term to connote that a society or nation, collectively, make up one body, with members of that society making up the different parts of the body. While the rich and powerful may be the head or at the top of that body, if the other, “lower” parts of the body become diseased or dysfunctional it will eventually impact the head or those on top. This means that if there is too much disparity—especially of income and resources—and the “lower” parts become so impoverished that they cannot function in a reasonably healthily, and dignified, manner, this will eventually affect and infect the entire body. In other words, if the society is too unbalanced–with respect to wealth, resources, power, means, access to employment, health care–this disparity will eventually impact the whole body, including those at the very top.

Now, it does not have to be completely equal or even. It is inevitable that some will have more and others will have less. But when a very small minority have everything and the majority can barely survive—and if that minority creates, perpetuates, or exploits and feeds off of the suffering of the majority—then we are grossly off balance and have a serious problem. We end up with a body politic with diseased limbs, and a head that often exploits or creates those diseases in the first place. This is a foolish and destructive state of being, not least because what happens to the lower body parts will eventually impact the head. While the head may benefit for a while from the suffering of the other parts, in reality, a diseased or neglected limb will eventually infect the entire body. If not treated, the outcome is eventual death.

Capitalism in its present form is a socio-economic system that would rather chop off its diseased limbs and hobble itself than feed and nourish those limbs to prevent disease in the first place. It is a system that believes it profits from the malnourishment and suffering of those limbs. And in the short term it does profit; financially that is. But remember that unbalanced ship. Eventually even those at the very front of the ship—the monopoly capitalists, the bankers, the multinational corporations, the complicit governments and political leaders—will be impacted by a ship of poor integrity. When a ship with too many holes begins to sink, it will not matter what class or section one is seated in. We will all go down.

If the present Corona virus situation, and the economic fallout from it, has shown us anything, it is that many people in western society are overburdened with debt. Very few households have enough savings to get them through a couple months without work, let alone a year or more. While we are reluctant to talk about it, especially in the mainstream media, the old notion of work and employment (with regular paycheques, medical benefits and pensions) is becoming a thing of the past, and has been for years. In the era of economic globalization the reality of the workforce is one of diminished traditional employment. This manifests as either outright unemployment or underemployment.

Examples of underemployment are freelance work, contract work, “gigging” or being forced to participate in the sharing economy. These terms are euphemisms for the reality of growing economic crisis and reduced economic security. The reality is that access to stable and well-paying work and income has been decreasing since the 1980s while the cost of living has only gone up. To fill in the gaps in their income, many households have had to rely on increasing debt and credit card usage just to get by. And when, suddenly, what little work and income these underemployed people do have is halted due to a virus, there is no way to service debts; not to mention, pay for rent, mortgages and food.

Basically people: The ship is sinking. The economic disparity and the uneven distribution of wealth and resources has come home to roost. Now, those on top (the bankers, etc.) will likely benefit from this dire situation in the short term. They may reduce interest rates or allow for the deferral of debt payments, mortgages, etc.–ultimately creating greater profits for themselves as individuals, businesses and governments borrow more money and go further into debt. However, with no one working and no one able to service those debts, eventually, it will all crash and burn.

A debt economy is unsustainable. It was unsustainable and unrealistic from the very beginning, but no one was willing to admit it. Not the individual that wants to live beyond their means by relying on credit. Or the individual that is forced to live on credit because they have far too little means to begin with. Or the bankers that get mega rich by keeping everyone in debt, with individuals paying back fake money (i.e., money that banks create as a credit card balance by entering numbers into a computer screen) with real money (i.e., the real interest one has to pay to use that fake money). Or the capitalist/banker/corporate-allied politicians who can stave off politico-economic uprising as long as the population is able to eat and survive by using credit and borrowing money.

The culture of debt has allowed us to ignore how unbalanced and desperate the economic situation actually is. It is a house of cards that we all patriciate in and all help to prop up, and with one ‘global pandemic’ it may all come crumbling down. Whether we will be better or worse off for it—whether the leaders and the mega-rich will use the virus situation to make politico-economic life more austere and more draconian, or whether humanity will find a way to prevent that and come together in an unprecedented form of collective living and cooperation—remains to be seen. A realist would say it will surely change for the worst; the system always finds a way to profit from disaster and come out on top. While others might say that the paradigm is shifting, and a new socio-economic paradigm is inevitable. Before we can talk about the future, and a possible way forward, we need to take a deeper dive into the cause of our present-day imbalance.

The Roots of Our Present Imbalance? 

As I stated earlier, balance, as I use it here, is not some feel-good new age concept. On the contrary, balance is necessary condition for the healthy function of both human beings and human society. I believe that the work of psychiatrist Ian McGilchrist is indispensable for understanding the importance of balance, and what can happen when humans–and human society–are out of balance. In his book The Master and His Emissary: The Divided Brain and the Making of the Western World, McGilchrist looks at the development of the western world through a neuropsychological prism. He argues that our way thinking since the Enlightenment–and Descartes mechanistic worldview–has led to what he describes as pathological left-brain imbalance. We all know that the brain is divided into left and right hemisphere, with the left brain traditionally understood as the analytical side and right as the creative side. McGilchrist explains in his book that these are over simplifications. While it is true that the right hemisphere is more creative and intuitive, the so-called analytical left hemisphere cannot function properly without the holistic, big-picture perspective of the right-hemisphere. Without the right-hemisphere to balance the myopic functions of the left-hemisphere–which are traditionally concerned with base survival and the acquisition of provisions and food–a pathological left-brain dominance arises.

We have been marching towards pathological left-brain dominance since Descartes and his mechanistic worldview. In Descartes’ mechanistic conception of the world, “all of nature works according to mechanical laws, and everything in the material world can be explained in terms of the arrangement and movements of its parts.” [Cambridge University]. This philosophical position is known as Cartesian reductionism. The main problem with the reductionist worldview is the fact that, while it is okay to believe that structures are made of smaller parts, this does not imply that their properties can be explained in terms of smaller parts one. In other words, the whole cannot be understood by reducing it to its parts. Another problem with the mechanistic worldview, is that it “de-aminates” the whole of nature; and positions humans as being outside of—and superior to—nature. As Rupert Sheldrake and others have noted, before Descartes, philosophers (and ancient cultures in general) saw all of nature as alive; and understood humans as integrally connected to the rhythms of nature. In this traditional view, we are nature (and we are each other; insofar as we are connected to everything in nature, including others). In this respect, what we do to nature or to other human beings, we ultimately do to ourselves.

The pre-Cartesian, holistic worldview–with everything in nature being integrally connected and the whole being understood as much more than the sum of its parts–reflects the reality of the human brain. For while the two hemispheres are contained within separate hemispheres,  they are integrally connected and must work together and be in proper balance in order for the human being (and the society we create) to function properly. A dysfunctional worldview (such as that of Cartesian reductionism) will lead to brain imbalance, which in turn creates a dysfunctional–or imbalanced–world. it is important to note that Decartes’ worldview is not all bad. The mechanistic worldview helped usher in the Age of Reason, the Enlightenment, the Scientific Revolution, and, eventually, theIndustrial Revolution, and urbanization. These brought us many great innovations. However, they went too far in their mechanistic and materialistic reductionism; leading eventually to a hyper-consumerist culture that relies on debt slavery, and vast inequalities of wealth and power, to sustain itself.

For Ian McGilchrist, the mechanistic worldview eventually gave rise to a type of pathological left-brain dominance. He states that: [quote] “over the past four centuries, the left hemisphere of the brain has progressively pushed aside our right hemisphere. It has now taken over our self-understanding…and is…leading us all down the road to ruin.” (Cited in Open Culture ). The problem with left-brain dominance is that it puts the wrong hemisphere in charge, so to speak. As McGilchrist explains, the reason the brain is divided is because, throughout our evolution, the brain had to do two opposing things at the same time: It had to have a razor-sharp focus in order to hunt for food (left hemisphere), while having a broad enough picture of everything else, so that it did not become food (right hemisphere). In this respect, the left-hemisphere is the narrow-focused predator, while the right-hemisphere is the big-picture, thinker. In other words, the left-brain apprehends, while the right-brain comprehends.Because the left-brain is tasked with apprehending rather than comprehending, a left-brain dominant society would be focused on wealth, power, accumulation and control. And would lose sight of the right-brain—or whole-brain’s— concern with Truth, Meaning, Beauty and Goodness. This is exactly the global culture—and imbalance—we have today…

In future articles I will explore possible solutions to the imbalance, and whether there is a way out. I will posit that just as a flawed worldview and its attendant brain imbalance got us into this mess, a better (more holistic) worldview and proper brain balance could be a way out. And I will posit that the Electric Universe Model may represent both–a holistic worldview that is more right-brain oriented, and a possible blue print for a better and more balanced world (both within, and without!).