(spoiler alert: I don’t know and there’s no way to know—but what if there were?)

“The created universe carries the yin at its back and the yang in front; through the union of the pervading principles it reaches harmony.” –part 39 of the Tao Te Ching

Let’s assume that there really is such a thing as a quantifiable Bad and Good, outside of personal opinion. Is there balance between them in the universe, and will there ever be? People say they want balance in their lives, but why would we aim for equal positives and negatives when we can aim for having only positives instead? This question of balance recalls the Zero-Energy Universe hypothesis in physics, which claims that the sum of all positive energy in the form of matter is exactly canceled out by its negative energy in the form of gravity. If this hypothesis is correct then the grand total of all energy in existence might be, and always have been, balanced at zero.  If this is true, then it answers one big question about the theory of the Big Bang—how can so much energy come from nothing without breaking the Law of the Conservation of Energy, which states that energy can be neither created nor destroyed? The Zero Energy Universe Hypothesis seems to answer that question by showing that there was no absolute increase in energy during the Big Bang, and that the respective levels of matter and gravity have been cancelling each other out since the very beginning.

“He thought the world’s heart beat at some terrible cost and that the world’s pain and its beauty moved in a relationship of diverging equity and that in this headlong deficit the blood of multitudes might ultimately be exacted for the vision of a single flower.” –Cormac McCarthy, Blood Meridian

If the energy of the physical universe is in balance, could this mean by analogy that the sums of all evil and benevolence are also equal to one another? The concept of cosmic symmetry has an intuitive appeal. This dualistic view was held by the Manichees in Persia, along with many other religious sects from the ancient world like the Gnostics, Zoroastrians and Taoists. In contrast with the influential fourth-century Christian theologian, Augustine of Hippo, who believed that God is only good and that therefore evil is simply the lack of his goodness, the Manichees saw a second presence of divine wickedness in the world, playing a role in the creation of the universe and constantly struggling with the force of light, its equal in divine power. The Devil in Christianity and Islam, on the other hand, is inferior to God. Ancient Chinese Taoists went in a different direction. They didn’t advocate for the Bad but they still viewed it as one of the two essential halves of the universe, which could not exist fully without it. That contrasts with the Augustinian Christian view that the Bad is an absence of God’s goodness—an emptiness which can ultimately be filled, hypothetically allowing the universe to exist without it. Who’s right?

“Human history is not the battle of good struggling to overcome evil. It is a battle fought by a great evil struggling to crush a kernel of human kindness.” –Vasily Grossman, Life and Fate

Even a passing glance at the current state of the world can leave a person feeling like the Bad definitely outweighs the Good but maybe that’s only because we focus on the negative and take goodness for granted. After all, the media are not able to report on how many people perform acts of kindness for each other on a given day. Perhaps even a perfect fifty percent negativity would feel imbalanced. I don’t like the idea that balance is the best we can do. I don’t like the idea that everything in life has a cost, or that nothing is purely good, but every action we take does appear to require an equal trade-off. American bankers forgot this predictable maxim of existence when they crashed the world economy a few years ago by deluding themselves into thinking that their derivatives market could generate massive profits with no risk, only to discover that in fact they were generating massive profits with massive risk. Just because we cannot see what we are spending on something doesn’t mean it is free. Does that mean the world really is a zero-sum game in which one’s gain is always another’s loss? Will it never be the case that both can win?

Nothing is perfect. –English saying

Al-kamaal l-illah (“[Only] god is perfect.”) – Arabic saying

Comparing the common expressions of different languages can reveal the attitudes of their respective cultures. English speakers take a look at the material world, conclude that, “nothing is perfect,” and stop there. Arabic speakers behold the same imperfection in the human reality, but then shift their thoughts to the realm beyond human existence described by their religion and remind you that there is indeed such a thing as perfection, but it exists within God only. I think the fact that we have such concepts as “perfection” means that we all subconsciously leave the possibility open in our imagination for the moral universe to do better than just break even.

“The arc of the moral universe is long but it bends toward justice.”
–Theodore Parker (later quoted by Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.)

Despite society’s general fear of change and contempt toward ‘naïve’ idealists, deep down we ache to attain perfection of the human condition—either in this universe (in the form of utopia) or on some other plain of existence (in the form of paradise). One of the defining aspects of a religion is some idea of perfecting the human condition in an enlightened state of mind or paradise. Even some secular scientists promote fantastical visions of a future real world paradise. Futurist and inventor Raymond Kurzweil predicts that technology will continue to advance exponentially to the point that machine intelligence will fuse with and surpass human consciousness and morality, ultimately expanding throughout the known universe, turning dead matter like asteroids and planets into sentient extensions of its intelligence and thus transforming the universe into a “vast, transcendent mind.” Kurzweil acknowledges the religious nature of these technological revelations and the similarity between a “vast, transcendent mind” and a God. Even in the world of science, predictions for the deep future rely on our imagination, and as it has for millennia, our imagination often returns us to the same dream of human progress culminating in our longed-for catharsis: attaining enlightenment and perfection. When people believe that the current moment is an advancement from the past, they often believe the future will inevitably be better than the present.

“Government thinks things done by accident can only be remedied by accident. In actuality, things done on purpose can only be remedied on purpose.” –Richard Rothstein, research associate at the Economic Policy Institute

If moral progress is inevitable, the individual doesn’t need to expend any effort in pushing for that progress. If breaking even is the default state of the moral universe then you can always count on there being someone else to maintain that balance. Is this what Martin Luther King meant when he said optimistically that humanity’s morality inevitably bends toward justice? It’s easy to misinterpret his quote as meaning that the arc will bend itself. One of my favorite writers, Ta-Nehisi Coates, put his own twist on King’s words in an interview with comedian Jon Stewart. He claimed the arc of history “bends toward chaos.” His sobering assessment urges us to reevaluate how much progress the U.S. has actually made since the days of the civil rights movement, and to remember that the segregation (and the subsequent re-segregation) of American school districts was not an accident. Redlining, mass incarceration and housing discrimination were not accidents. These policies were deliberate, so the effect of those policies on black communities will not rectify itself if we continue to ignore it. I interpret Dr. King’s quote as meaning that the arc of the moral universe is long, but humans direct it toward justice. And direct it we must, which in the case of governing means enacting policies meant to explicitly undo the damage that has been done, i.e. re-integrating school districts, incentivizing investment toward neglected communities and offering subsidized housing for the many victims of proven housing discrimination.

The idea that balance is the natural state of the moral universe can be dangerous because it presumes that inaction brings about harmony, that peace is the default, and in turn, that everything right now is as good as it ever can be. Neither I nor anyone else can possibly offer an answer to the question of whether or not we are morally breaking even, but I do know that to assume balance will be reached without our own deliberate moral effort is to deprive tomorrow of its full potential.