Lessons from History: The Importance of Balance

Another piece for the ECLJ, or as the founder Mr Buttacavoli wittily titles it, Medea's Children. (If you get the reference, it's actually quite ominous. If not, don't worry, it's very obscure). This time, I chart the importance of balance and use a historical context to back my contention.

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As I begin this article, I am having two simultaneous Facebook chats, reading the latest from the Crikey Daily Mail, and finishing my Methods homework – so clearly I know a thing or two about balance.

As we move a period of life where we juggle our various duties sometimes with ease and sometimes with difficulty (a mate of mine reckons he has five jobs, but that’s another story), it actually pays to read the work of a historian (don’t all rush) and see whether history does, in fact, repeat itself.

A bit of exam revision for the Year 10 Lit. students: The Ancient Greeks were really the first culture to articulate this importance. I am of course talking about sophrosyne, the belief espoused, believe it or not, in the eponymous play of the revamped ECLJ - Medea. This belief suggests that everything should be in moderation – it applied to the spheres of arts, politics and domestic relations and many others. It is best summed up by the Nurse, when she says in the first stasimon, that “the middle way, neither great nor mean, is best by far”. Other examples of sophrosyne include the oracle at Delphi’s two most famous proverbs: “Nothing in excess” and “Know thyself”.

Now that’s a good sentiment to have 2400 years ago, but what about sophrosyne in today’s world? Well, believe it or not, a blogger by the name of Astrochronic has started the “Sophrosynist Movement”, which is described as “a new modern branch of Conservatism mixed with Libertarianism focusing on balance, self understanding and moderation.” Now, due to the fact that his blog is on MySpace, I’m not able to check it out for myself, simply because, well, I’m not an über kind of guy. (Again, that’s another story....)

Let’s move on, then, to a similar but more recent movement – the Eight Hour Day.

Due to the Industrial Revolution, unbounded capitalism was brought to the fore. Child labour and unregulated working conditions were the catalysts for social change. But that is not putting it in its proper historical context.

After the defeat of Napoléon in 1815, the conquered European states scrambled to reclaim their territories. The Congress of Vienna was the climax of this period, where the idea of “balance of power” was introduced: that is, the respective powers of the great European powers would cancel each other out. This proved to be irrelevant in the 1840s when two men by the name of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels wrote a little pamphlet titled The Communist Manifesto. Basically agitating the lower classes (proletariat) for change, it arguably was directly responsible for the 1848 Springtime of the Nations. Revolutions, or attempted revolutions, spread like the cold in midwinter and it signalled a new era of nationalism and liberalism. And it is these two political ideologies that are responsible for the Eight Hour Day.

The point is, proponents of these two political ideologies grew to such a number (due to Marx and Engels) that they were able to dictate social reform (“liberty or death”, anyone?) and make the unbounded capitalism of the start of the Industrial Revolution era simply untenable for governments to pursue.

So what happens when these supposed building blocks of society fall apart?

Imagine yourself to be a peasant or a farmer. You’re the stereotypical “man of the house” providing for your family. For you, time is money. So what happens when you lose your money, a la the Great Depression? Logically, you also lose your time.

Think about it. When you’re busy, time is important. When you’re not, clearly time isn’t. And what more physical manifestation of busyness is there besides the watch? So there clearly is a relationship between time and busyness.

So, what happened in the Great Depression, where unemployment was plentiful across the globe? Read this observation of a German town afflicted by lethargy:

Nothing is urgent anymore; they have forgotten how to hurry. For the man, the division of the days into hours has long since lost its meaning. [my emphasis] Of one hundred men, eighty-eight were not wearing a watch and only thirty-one had a watch at home. Getting up, the midday meal, going to bed, are the only remaining points of reference. In between, time elapses without anyone really knowing what has taken place.

But I thought I just said the Eight Hour Day, or “division of the days”, was an important building block of society....

And to continue the Germany analogy, look what happened for the old Deutschervolk to get out of Depression....It had nothing to do with balance at all.

So, balance is an important part of our lives. Whether that be in the form of sophrosyne, (or Astrochronic’s “Sophrosynist Movement”) or the continuation of the eight-hour day is irrelevant. As long as it allows me to maintain simultaneous Facebook chats....