Balance Part 3 - Societal Effects

In my last blog, I looked at the importance of balance in a person's life. But balance is not just important to us as individuals. It is also important to society in general.
Let me illustrate this with a not so obvious example. We know that unemployment is too high today. All of us would like for it to be lower. But do we want a society with absolutely no unemployment. If you imagine such a society it would be one in which employees would have a difficult time finding someone to hire. They likely would have to higher people who are not qualified and the work done in society would suffer. Obviously, we do not want unemployment that is too high but having it too low can produce its own problems.
Or what about society change. We want society to progress and to become better. But do we want everything to change at once? There is a healthy rate of change for our societies that is not too fast or too slow. It is all about a balanced approach to societal change.
The qualities we think are good in a society are only that way if they are not too much. Societal pacifism can reduce incidents of war but also produce appeasement of evil nations. Technological development can improve the lives of people in society but also can create cultural changes that people are not ready for and may de-humanize them. Societal morality can turn help produce discipline among its members but also create a sterile legalism. Furthermore qualities that we think as negative in society can also produce positive effects in the right amount. Societal deviance can often lead to new social innovations. A social "warrior" mentality can provide a deterrence to invasion from other countries. It is all about balance. It is hard to think of a beneficial societal quality that there can not be too much of or even a negative social quality that can not be useful in certain situations.
The lesson of balance is that we can not become too attached to any certain social quality as an absolute good. In fact some of the worst atrocities occur in societies that "worship" some beneficial societal aspect. In my next blog I will outline what I mean by this and further illustrate the need for balance in our societies and lives.

Sincerely,

Trouble-Maker