balance

I'm working on balance.

My day job is teaching a robot to walk on two legs; that takes balance.

My antidepressants stopped working; an issue of chemical balance.

The guy who just shot 33 people in Virginia was not, I suspect, balanced.

Who to blame? So much blame, so little time. I'll throw this one out: cultural values that force people to repress their feelings, conform or be rejected, fit in our be an outcast, do not promote inner balance. They are by their very nature unbalanced creeds; they insist that one size fits all. "The nail that sticks up gets hammered down" they say in Japan. There are elements of this in almost all formal religions; in science and academia, in professional circles, in nations, within ethnic cultures, in high school, summer camp, support groups, political parties, virtual communities (Second Life), and so on. Pretty much everywhere humans get together, there is a sense of belonging for some, coupled with the meme that there are others who simply don't belong.

There's nothing wrong with wanting to interact with like-minded individuals. But, why does that seem so often to lead to a feeling of superiority and/or subjugation? The idea that it's a zero-sum game: us, or them. Sunni/Shiite; Aarab/Iisraeli; democrat/republican; east/west; religious/secular; black/white.

Whatever happened to Yin/Yang?