Nature left to itself (without man's interference) might look in balance, but it's natural progression is to chaos and disorder. To quote from the reviews of a favourite nature management book of mine (given to me by a teacher when i finished highschool): "For over a hundred years nature-lovers held fast to the belief that preserving the wild means keeping people out. But as Stephen Budiansky dramatically demonstrates in Nature's Keeper's, nature is much more chaotic and chancier than those who believe in the 'balance of nature' would have us think.

Ah yes, entropy. Well, here's the deal. We are looking at "chaos" from the human perspective of order as we define it, but what is chaos if not a state of counter-balance for all the order that originates in the universe? So, human-defined "chaos" and "order" are, in themselves, perfectly balanced, if you look at the big picture.

While the universe appears to move toward entropy, it's evolutionary processes push us further and further toward order. Humans, the order-seekers, were created by nature after all, and it's not unreasonable to assume that there are billions of intelliegent species like us strewn across the universe.

However, that being said, I see what you're getting at and I agree that (human-defined) perfect order within a society is not only impossible but ultimately undesirable. In my novel-in-progress, "Closetleap," I theorize something that is called the Free-Shape Principle, which, in essence, says that the only societies thst will flourish will be those that do not place limits on its creative/playful members except to limit the harming of other people.

So, in the scheme of things, the ultimate direction of the evolution of a culture is toward something like that, meaning that logic will dictate laws and the hard sciences and emotions will be left to the realms of the humanities, where they belong. What will ultimately occur is a society that is as close to balanced as a society made of billions of individuals CAN be--it will mean that laws will ONLY be defined in terms of demonstrably provable harm. The end result will be a far more responsible and moral culture.

If you're familiar with the labeling theory, you'll note that many people, particularly those without well-defined ethical or cultural boundaries or with low self-esteem, are susceptible to believing in the cultural labels put on them and behaving in accordance with those beliefs. Many criminals are difficult to rehabilitate precisely because society views them as such, and they surrender to the idea rather than struggle with the overwhelming amount of negative messages they hear in the media. Basically, they fall into the role that is expected of them.

Now, imagine a culture where people WEREN'T labelled or expected to fulfill cultural roles (roles like husband, wife, or twisted sicko.) This isn't to say there will be no husbands, wives or twisted sickos, but it will mean that these roles are not culturally defined and so it will be far easier to become what is desirable to you (e.g. a good spouse) and not become what isn't desirable (e.g. a twisted sicko.) People will be far more likely to be who they are, good or bad--not because of societal expectations but because that is who they desire to be.

In that sense, we will really be able to tell who the REAL twisted sickos are and weed them out, and the vast majority of criminals, who aren't bad people but rather victims of a culture of labeling and out-of-balance laws against victimless crimes, will be far LESS likely to fall into negative roles that lead them down a kind of culturally pre-set path to causing REAL harm. Likewise, people will find it easier to love and experience a greater range of humanity, not because they have to but because they want to--no pressure to conform means an openness to truer emotions and experiences. You see what I mean?

The two most powerful emotions are love and fear. In a sense, they are opposites. Love is open, expansive, and fluid. Fear is closed, regressive and fixed. Think about it--true love places no expectations upon the person that is loved. It is unconditional. But when you make sex a condition of love, you automatically place a massive limit on it. This is why many relationships fail, I believe--love is not allowed to be love, to flourish. In a real loving relationship, sex will happen because it wants to happen, but it will not be expected of either lover.

On the macro scale it's the same. A culture without inherent expectations of it's members will be fluid and open to what it wants and needs to be. A culture with minimal expectations is a culture that loves itself and gives freely of itself. Thus, it will flourish because it will fall into line with the natural process of cultural evolution, which is toward true balance (as opposed to the human/cultural definition of balance, a state that doesn't--and cannot--exist anyway.)

Now let's look at fear. As I said, fear is in many ways love's opposite. It places too many expectations on people. For example, the pain caused by infidelity is based on a fear of rejection. The expectation of sex in a relationship is based on a fear that one will not get their need for intimacy met, etc., etc. So the problem with most relationships is that fear rules the dynamic rather than love.

And in families, when children are expected to conform to unrealistic household rules, it is generally because of a fear by parents that their children will reject them and their values. A parent who limits a child's freedom based not on safety but on moral expectations is setting themselves up for rebellion--if not on an individual level, then later at the cultural one. Why are so many kids these days seemingly apathetic and anti-social? I say elementary, my dear Watson--because their parents effectively labelled them as such by placing limits on them based on the expectation that they will rebel.

Again let's view this on a macro scale. A society that places unfair limits on its members is one ruled by fear--limiting drug use is partly based on the expectation/fear that drug users will hurt others and themselves, and many wind up doing just that, precisely because they have come to believe they can't help it while under the influence of drugs. You see what I'm saying? AoC laws are exactly the same type of thing. They place unnecessary and unnatural limits on the sexual experimentation of others based on fear.

[Note: A healthy fear for one's children is a good thing, but this goes way beyond that. It is based more on the fear of the rejection of an old value system than a fear for the child's safety. After all, if safety was the main issue, then children would be forbidden to ride in cars except when absolutely necessary. After all, far more children are hurt and killed in auto accidents than by sexual contact, and even there most of the harm is caused by the culture itself rather than the contact, yes? Obviously, protecting children from harm isn't the REAL issue.]

I also propose that laws against drugs and other victimless crimes are based on another fear, the fear that more people on the street equals less jobs available and an even greater spread of limited resources. So, its an effective way of limiting the competition. Yep, it comes down to greed--you can thank our capitalist culture for teaching us to value things over people.

In essence, our culture is like a huge dysfunctional family--it infantilizes its members and keeps them afraid of Big Bad Daddy. But really, deep down, Big Bad Daddy is just as afraid of his children as they are of him--he fears rejection, disobedience, abandonment. Our culture (and most cultures) are governed by fear rather than love. This is cyclical--it starts with the way children are raised, and those children bring it with them when they get into positions of power, then give it right back to the citizens, who raise their children yet again the same way.

But, if you look at history on the large scale, you'll note that fear is inevitably replaced by love. The slaves were freed, women got the vote, gays are being accepted more and more, and stupid laws are being reassessed and rewritten. Fear is self-destructive, and any culture that hopes to thrive must inevitably abandon it for the most part. Certain laws will always be necessary--laws against rape, assualt and murder or example--but those are logical laws based on real harm. They should apply the same way to all people at all times, regardless of their age, gender, etc. (Remember our definition of truth?)

Furthermore: "Rather than instrusion that upsets nature's timeless balance and equilibrium, disturbance is a necessity for much of life on the planet.... Disturbance occurs across all scales of time and space."

This is true, but again, we are looking at it from human eyes, so we often fail to grasp that disturbances are not only a neccessity, they ARE part of the balance. Consider a forest fire. These may destroy lots of trees (read: natural resources for humans) and even destroy homes or kill a few people, but they are necessary, nature's way of clearing off alot of deadwood and making way for new life. The ashes left by forest fires is great fertilizer and brings forth new life quickly and abundantly. Remember, every action has an equal and opposite reaction--there's your balance in effect.

Nature's move toward chaos on the one hand is a move toward order on the other--they are opposites, the yin and yang of natural processes. Beautiful, perfect, and inescapable. Truth=reality, and the reality is, nothing is ever created or destroyed, merely changed, from order to chaos and back to order again. When we find the center, the fulcrum of this process and live there, we will be in balance.

I suppose you could argue that while natural disasters upset the balance of things temporarily, they don't affect the outcome of some final predestined final state. But there are too many factors and possibilites to consider. Who/what could be directing them to an end state? Will all the people on the planet, suddenly adopt one way of living? And they will suddenly learn how to live without destroying the world they need to survive on? Do you think that we haven't yet learnt how to do that? That men do not yet know the 'right way to live' that works for everybody, but oneday we will? Human beings have all that knowledge within them right now, why do we have to wait for more knowledge, and go on thinking we are just inherently wrong...

Well, nature itself is directing mankind toward the balanced state, I'd say. Nature seeks stasis, and so, on the larger historical scale, we move along that path. No one lives forever, and in general the next generations adopt a more tolerant, open and loving attitude than the one before it. I'd call that the path of the Tao, but others might call it something else. Whatever it is, it's inevitable, I believe. I wouldn't call it predestined because I don't think it is limited by human concepts of time--it just . . . is.

As for people all adopting one way of living, no, absolutely not. Quite the opposite actually. What I'm suggesting is that the structure and definition of families will change as the culture changes, just as it always has. Currently, the majority of families are structured according to the expectation of two parents [man and woman] and children. At one time the cultural expectation was different, more of a clan--the patriarch, his wife (or wives) all of their children and grandchildren lived pretty much together. Then, the clans began to split apart. Then, we wound up with the family as it is today.

In the future, once expectations of what a family is (or should be) begins to dissolve, then you will find all sorts of arrangements, most of which will be far healthier and more suitable to the flourishing of love rather than fear. Sex will be just another activity, not the thing with all the cultural baggage it has now. Religion will be all but eliminated and spirituality will replace it. Laws will be based on logically demonstrable truth and not on such a fickle thing like emotion.

I do think that we will largely begin to learn to live in peace and balance with both our fellow man and with our planet and our environment. No, we haven't yet learned to do this, and likely we'll never perfect it. Is perfection even possible? But we will get better and better at it--yes, I do believe. :)

You are talking about the present, and cultures that come and go. What about cultures that exist, right now, and these are the norms? What about cultures in the past? Is the culture of western society so overpowering, we don't even notice the others.. History is always viewed from our current point of view. I don't think that we have always put so many limitations on the children until now. (in the current 'civilized world').

Oh, I quite agree. I was just talking about the quantum mechanical universe, the possibility of near infinite realities that parallel this one but are all different. As for this reality, yes, such things have existed in the past and will exist again.

Let's imagine you have this perfect image of how you want your dream house to be. Does the natural balance of things mean it's going to materialise because it was predestined to happen, just because you wanted it to? Assuming you do get it, will it stay in perfect balance? ie neat and tidy, or will it approach some predestined state of disorder, where the place falls in to disrepair, because nature's tendency is to chaos..

I think you misunderstood me somewhat. I did say that reality is still limited by natural laws, and houses cannot simply materialize because we will them to . . . or can they? Well, in some distant future, perhaps technology will be so advanced that we will be able to "imagine" something into existence, though it will still have to utilize natural resources to do so. You can't make something out of nothing; you can't violate the laws of physics. But somwhere down the line, our brains may be wired into sophisticated technology that has at its disposal construction machines and resources so that you can set those machines to work merely with a thought.

And furthermore, the technology might maintain both itself and anything it builds, suspending nature's gravitation toward chaos, putting order and chaos in perfect balance and freeing mankind up to pursue other things. Yep, I'd say this is the inevitable path of humanity.

Well i keep comparing things to nature, afterall we are a natural creation.. People/nature aren't naturally kind, or evil, or anything in between. The natural state of things is indifference. Do you think that storm that just flattened your dream house had an evil intent? It was indifferent to your feelings... I don't see how a culture can be based on values that assume that if you let people love eachother how they want, they will naturally be kind and the society will be successful. It has to be more complicated that. It's more likely to be a combination of removing prohibitions on how people can love eachother. When did making rules guarantee behaviours were controlled anyway? There must be a better way of reinforcing behaviour in people that is for the good of all.

Your first statement is true--good and evil are really man-made concepts and as such, aren't true. They come with a ready-made judgment attached, and nature is nonjudgmental. That invalidates many laws and cultural mores, but not all of them. True harm can be measured--we can tell that a murdered person has been harmed when they've been murdered, because harm is built into the very idea of murder. Ditto with rape and assualt and even theft and vandalism (which harm property rather than the person themselves.)

So, I'm not suggesting that people will be naturally more kind--merely more natural, and nature moves toward peace. Any violent disruptions in nature are ultimately in service of the greater peace. [A volcano erupting is a pressure valve that allows the earth not to explode; earthquakes are the result of the settling of tectonic plates.] And, of course, humans themselves are at the vanguard of nature's move toward peace--we evolved to bring balance to the world, to stave off chaos (but not to eliminate it entirely.)

Kindness and love are emotions. They aren't real as such, but they help us create reality. We have the potential to love (or hate or fear) as much or as little as we like. Anything is possible in the realm of potential--it truly is limitless.

Okay, I'm very tired now. Been writing this for a couple of hours, LOL. I hope it gets my point across. Thanks for the great reply. :)