The Long-Suppressed Equilibration Principle

John L. Waters

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John L. Waters

May 4, 2002

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An idea originates as something suppressed in the

unconscious forms in the conscious mind and becomes

expressed. Art, literature, and other creative

endeavors including philosophy originate as certain

suppressed ideas become expressed. To understand what

is basic to creative endeavors, including philosophy,

then, we examine the natural balance that is often

suppressed in civilized persons. This paper examines

the fundamental question: How valid is this idea of

the long-suppressed balance, and where does the idea

take us?

The child first learns the meaning of the balance

intuitively by crawling around on all fours and by

playing on a teeter-totter. The definition of the

balance is learned through regular and sometimes

strenuous physical body-work. The older child learns

to define a balance verbally and in terms of numbers.

The mind, the verbal brain, and the physical body all

can function in unity to give the developing child a

clearer and clearer understanding of the balance.

The balance exists in the physical brain, between

right side and left side. The balance exists in the

functioning brain as well, when neurochemical activity

on the right side and left side is equal or almost

equal. You can feel this balance as you walk from

class to class and you feel it even better as you

walk barefoot along the warm beach holding hands with

your boyfriend or your girlfriend. You shift your

weight to your left leg and then you shift your weight

to your right leg. You move along progressively

without giving the balance any thought.

Consider the balance in a purely physical example.

Your car also depends on the balance principle. If

one tire goes flat you have to slow down. If both

tires on one side go flat you don't roll along so

merrily anymore. In the bilaterally summetrical

human brain also, there is the balance. You can see

the balance in pictures of the brain.

Note: Both inside the brain and outside the brain,

when one element strives to beat or humiliate the

other element, the one side tries to tip the balance

that exists between the two sides. The subdued

element contributes less. For example, this is true

when intellectual acumen subdues the non-rational

faculty. It also happens when intuition or charm

subdues the rational intellect. Moreover, the balance

in the body may be subdued as in the use of just the

dominant hand in writing and in eating.

In combining words and visual imagery, one gets poetry

and in combining poetry with music one gets songs.

Reasonable wordiness and visual imagery arise from

different sides of the brain and words and music arise

from different sides of the brain. Thus the

singer-songwriter employs the balance more than the

reasoning logician or philosopher. The virtue and

value of the balance therefore may be poorly argued by

songwriters or even totally unrecognized by

philosophers.

In traditional schools the children are encouraged to

favor one hand over the other. Youngsters striving at

printing letters and handwriting illustrate this

suppression of the balance. Moreover, teaching

logical thinking and rational argument but not Mother

Goose and making up other songs further suppress the

balance. Indeed, there may be little or no

nonrational intelligence left in the academic

instructor. Consequently, the teacher isn't likely to

intuit the suppression of the balance, and recognize

the loss of intelligence in himself or herself and in

other "good" students. Furthermore, a "mere song" may

be dismissed as having no value. This further

illustrates the point.

So what is the value of the balance? The balance is

built into the DNA of plants and animals, and in

humans there is the balance of bilateral symmetry.

This bilateral symmetry runs up and down the spine and

into the brain. Moreover, more of the brain is active

when both sides of the body are being stimulated,

developed, and used. This is the wild state in the

wild animal and the natural human. In this wild state

the human is using more of his or her intelligence.

This includes all the intelligences Dr. Howard Gardner

promotes in his well-known book "States of Mind."

mathematical intelligence, kinesthetic intelligence,

musical intelligence, spatial intelligence,

interpersonal intelligence, intrapersonal

intelligence, verbal intelligence, and naturalistic

intelligence.

In teaching young people to favor one side of the body

and brain over the other, and use verbal arguments

including laws printed in the lawbooks to justify

every action, our civilization suppresses the balance.

This damages most those children whose main inherited

talent is in one or more of Dr. Gardner's realms of

nonverbal intelligence which aren't emphasized in the

school. This damage results in a loss of intelligence

throughout the civilization and a loss of a sense of

connectedness between humans and the rest of nature.

Civilization therefore keeps on working to subdue the

intelligence in naive children. A few adults may

regain the sense of balance and connectedness but they

fail to strip this previously very mystical subject

down to its bare bones and make the subject quite easy

even for most twelve year olds to understand. Indeed

in present dominant cultures the "smarter" people are

expected to use more and more sophisticated language

which many persons can't ever understand.

Running through the explanation again, in human

development the infant first crawls on all fours. In

this activity a child feels the balance of right and

left all up and down the spine and in the pelvis and

shoulders. Later the child learns to stand upright

and hold a spoon with just one dominant hand. Not

many years later this child learns to use a pencil or

a pen in the same dominant hand. Furthermore, mastery

of wordiness involves the dominant side of the

neocortex. For most persons the speech center is on

the left side. By this time the child has come to

expect a conflict to be resolved by the stronger,

better, dominant element as in board games, social

games, and athletic sports. This teaches the young

brain to expect dominance and even to want to dominate

as in the role of instructor or be dominated as in the

role of pupil.!

Another example of this disruption of the balance by

suppression of one side of the duality is the example

that dramatic art provides. The reader or audience

wants the hero to dominate the villain and thus win in

the conflict and end the struggle. Thus, by resolving

the conflict, the storyteller or dramatic artist ends

the struggle in the mind of the reader or the viewer.

This reflects the expectation to have the issue

resolved as one side is defeated. In fact, however,

the balance of two opposing elements perpetuates the

interaction between the two conflicting elements and a

person wants this tension resolved. However in real

life certain opposing components remain balanced and

the one never dominates the other. In our

civilization, however, such balanced components are

suppressed and pushed down into the unconscious mind

so that we don't usually think about them. They are

suppressed in what Carl Jung called "the shadow"

realm.

In his essay, "The Long Bag We Drag Behind Us" the

prominent British poet Robert Bly suggests that as

young children we suppressed certain parts of us that

our parents and teachers didn't like, such as eating

our soup with a spoon in each hand and drawing or

painting with a pen or a brush in each hand.

Moreover, Bly says that in certain violent eruptions

of creativity, as in writing, musical composition, and

dramatic art repressed material rises up out of the

depths and the artist expresses the balance in some

work of art or literature. The popular art work

musical work or literary work resolves the tension so

that when the piece is over the audience is satisfied

that the tension has been relieved and the work is

good. This helps illustrate the socio-cultural taboo

against balance and the perpetual conflict between

opposites.

In real life when a person feels confused, he or she

doesn't know how to resolve an issue or a conflict.

Certain issues do not get resolved, and the two

complementary elements remain equally strong. One

example is the two legs in walking. The two legs are

in balance and by keeping each leg strong the

complementary processes remain in balance. In human

relations, however, there is often a struggle or a

conflict and people want the conflict to be resolved.

People want to know which element is dominant.

Individuals and teams play out this conflict in games

which entertain and excite many people. But a match

which goes on and on and doesn't end with one person

or team winning over another may bore the onlookers.

People want the conflict resolved and the balance

terminated. The spectators want the side they favor

to win.

Carl Jung and Robert Bly talk about repressed material

being presented in a dream or in expressions of the

shadow part of the personality. The shadow is what a

young person suppresses because it is something that

society doesn't want the child to express. So the

child pushes this undesirable activity, thought, or

expression down under his or her consciousness. The

balance is just a state of balanced activity. The bad

child isn't able to make up his or her mind what to

say, do, or feel. The bad child vacillates between

two alternatives and doesn't commit to either one.

That's an example of the balance being considered bad.

So the good child suppresses the balance and quickly

decides what to do, what to think, and what to feel.

This child is quick to answer and talks with facility.

The more balanced child is more schizoid. In our

culture schizoid is viewed as a bad way to be! Being

a schizophrenic is considered even worse.

The schizoid child might grow up and become a

profound philosopher because using this balance

principle the careful philosopher weighs certain more

or less familiar arguments against certain other more

or less unfamiliar arguments. The writings of a

profound philosopher may arrive at just the conclusion

that "we don't know the answer or we can't know the

answer." Different arguments come up and it's

considered okay when the philosopher vacillates and is

slow to make a commitment to any single idea or theory

of what is true, right, or good. Meanwhile ordinary

people rush about doing what they believe to be true,

right, or good and sometimes the outcome is

destructive to physical property as well as to

philosophy. Often there is even a war over which side

is correct and good. The soul-searching philosopher

may go off into seclusion as Lao Tse did and compose

short pieces about the balancing of opposites and the

legendary consummate philosopher in whom none of the

traditional conflicts get resolved even as he or she

comes into harmony with everything. This undominated,

liberated person steps outside of a culture based upon

domination and winning battles of words or swords.

Moreover, quite as the Zen archer shoots many arrows

without really striving to hit the target, the

consummate philosopher doesn't seek to win any

argument. In the consummate philosopher the balance

continues without being suppressed. The consummate

philosopher integrates both shadow and light, God and

the devil. This makes that person very difficult for

civilized people to understand because civilized

people as children were never taught about the

equilibration principle.

Philosophy, of course, has had many spinoffs,

including the long-famous idea from Empedocles of the

four basic elements composing all of nature: earth,

air, water, and fire. Concern over what matter is

composed of eventually led to the sciences of

chemistry and physics. Another basic idea is the idea

of zero. Zero is an essential concept in modern

science and mathematics. Another spinoff from

philosophy was Descartes idea of analytic geometry.

What is even more basic, though, is the idea of the

balance, which in most children gets suppressed so

deep that it remains down in the pelvic regions in

"the shadow" of the unconscious and never rises up

into consciousness. Down there in the pelvic regions

the sense of balance remains and it may be shared with

a sex partner. But sex is often regarded as a low

form of expression...below the realms of the dance,

theater, art, music, and literature. Furthermore, few

schools teach the tantric rituals. In certain parts

of the Orient the balance is much closer to the

consciousness of scholars and philosophers. But even

so, in the West, there is the phenomenon of many

philosophers joining in an ongoing exchange of ideas

which doesn't meet with a resolution and an end to the

ongoing struggle. This is actually a sign of

wellness, but in this culture of domination many

dominant personalities fail to recognize the

therapeutic nature of philosophical activity.

What is the argument against this concept of

equilibration and the suppression of the balance in

children? How can this be argued against when

children are taught to play games to win, and children

are taught to favor one hand over the other hand?

Well, one argument is this. Children are expected to

use both their eyes together in balance, and their

ears in balance. Young lungs are expected to work in

balance so that one lung doesn't atrophy from lack of

use. So certainly in many parts of the body it isn't

true that children are taught to violate the

equilibration principle. But when children are

expected to race to get the right answer, and dominate

what is wrong by being right, and prove how

intelligent they are by getting lots of right answers

on a test, this is an example of children learning to

dominate and be dominant. And the reflective

pondering mind that may make a child seem stupid and

slow gets tossed into Robert Bly's long bag we drag

behind us. Most every good and well-educated and

well-cultured child carries in that bag the balancing

rule of equilibration because of the way he or she was

socially conditioned.

If this is the case, and if the theories of Carl Jung

and Robert Bly have validity, we should observe that

often in an eruption of material from the unconscious

the inexplicably inspired person or the person

affected by the use of some mind-altering substance

would express this balance rule as an eruption of the

long-suppressed shadow from out of the unconscious.

Certainly Socrates expressed the balance in the way he

used verbal arguments to show that philosophers don't

really know even if they think they know. Time and

time again Socrates used careful arguments to show his

partner that his arguments were weak and not

trustworthy. Nor did Socrates advance his own theory

in an effort to dominate. We can say that Socrates

was functioning as a consummate philosopher, but of

course Plato was the actual philosopher whose

portrayal of Socrates is the one we know.

Regrettably, however, Plato didn't recognize what his

character Socrates represented, and Plato himself

didn't promote the equilibration principle as the

basis for doing philosophy and spinning off the

by-products of being open to many arguments from many

different points of view! In fact after presenting

the character of Socrates in his "Dialogues," Plato

went on to describe his ideal republic dominated by an

elite class of philosopher kings! Certainly a king

is supposed to dominate! One wonders how Socrates

would have challenged Plato's own ideas.

Observe the fluidity of an infant human, before

society has imposed this traditional standard of

domination of the one over the other. The infant

isn't yet aware of the civilized person's need to be

unbalanced and try to dominate the feeling of being in

balance up and down the spine and even up in the brain

at the top of the head. How soon it is the child

learns to imitate the ways of older humans who

suppressed the balance rule so many years before. And

how few of these persons grow up to become

philosophical in the way Socrates and the young Plato

were. So what caused Plato to lose track of the

wisdom of Socrates who shows how futile it is to

arrive at clear verbal definitions of vague human

qualities? Well, for one thing, Socrates didn't

really explain the fundamental process of inspiration

that is working the brain harder in accord with the

equilibration principle. Neither did Lao Tse, really

explain inspiration. Both of these men mainly

emphasized that "we do not know" or "the one who says

he knows does not know." Socrates and LaoTse both

made philosophy and brain work seem very mystical!

But you and I can observe the growth and development

of an infant and we can see the joy and the vigor in a

very young child. And we can see how this culture

takes this child and dominates the child with the rule

of unbalance. The dominated child learns to be very

skillful with the right hand or the left hand, and

the intellectually bright child learns to be very

facile in speech using words by working the dominance

rule inside of his or her brain. But observe that the

dominance rule is in violation of the balance rule.

We see this victory of the dominance rule over the

balance rule as a child is learning to be "good."

The bad child often lets the shadow come out and does

things which challenge the dominance of his or her

parents and other authority figures. The authority

usually tries to be more dominant and force the

rebellious child stuff the equilibration principle

back in the long bag. What happened with the

inspired Socrates and the inspired Jesus is that

society enforced the rule of dominance and these

enigmatic men were put to death. Most persons just

accept the rule of dominance and incorporate this rule

of into their own minds, bodies, emotions, and

demeanor. The schizoid child, though, is less

domineering. If the schizoid person becomes bolder

and senses in himself or herself the presence of Jesus

or Socrates, people will reject the insane man

because he can t justify this idea. In modern

civilization the rule of dominance is very strong and

the rule of balance keeps getting buried so deep in

the unconscious that people just don't ever get it

back. One wonders if Robert Bly will ever pull

equilibration out of his own bag.

John L. Waters

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The Long-Suppressed Equilibration Principle

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