(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, just for the sake of argument, that there really is such a thing as a quantifiable Bad and Good that exists outside of personal opinion. If that’s the case, is there balance between them in the universe? And if so, will there always be?

People often say they want balance in their lives, but I’ve always found that idea a little strange. Why would we aim for equal positives and negatives when, at least in theory, we could aim for having only positives instead? The question of balance brings to mind an idea from physics known as the Zero-Energy Universe hypothesis. This hypothesis suggests that the total positive energy of matter in the universe is exactly canceled out by the negative energy of gravity. If it’s correct, then the sum total of all energy in existence might be—and might always have been—zero.

If that’s true, it helps answer one of the biggest questions surrounding the Big Bang. How could so much energy come from “nothing” without violating the Law of the Conservation of Energy, which states that energy can neither be created nor destroyed? The Zero-Energy Universe hypothesis offers a neat solution: there was no net increase in energy at all. Matter and gravity have simply been canceling each other out since the very beginning. The universe may have exploded into existence, but its energy books were balanced from the start.

“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 physical universe really does balance itself in this way, it’s tempting to ask whether the same might be true of the moral universe. Could it be that the total amount of evil and benevolence also cancel each other out over time? The idea of cosmic symmetry has an intuitive appeal, and many belief systems throughout history have leaned into it. Various ancient religious traditions imagined the universe as a battleground between opposing forces of equal power, locked in an endless struggle between light and darkness. In those systems, evil is not a flaw or a mistake—it is a fundamental ingredient of reality.

This stands in contrast to another influential tradition, which argues that only good truly exists and that evil is merely the absence of goodness, like darkness is the absence of light. In this view, evil has no independent substance of its own. It is a lack, a void, something that could theoretically be eliminated entirely. Still other traditions take a different route altogether, viewing opposing forces not as enemies but as complementary halves of a larger whole. From that perspective, the universe cannot exist fully without both.

So who’s right? Is evil a rival force, a necessary counterpart, or just an absence waiting to be filled?

“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

A quick look at the world as it exists today can make it feel as though the Bad clearly outweighs the Good. But maybe that impression is misleading. We are constantly exposed to reports of violence, corruption, and disaster, while acts of kindness often pass unnoticed. No news outlet keeps a running tally of how many people help strangers, forgive each other, or quietly do the right thing on any given day. Even a perfectly even split between good and bad might feel imbalanced to creatures who are wired to notice threats more than stability.

Still, I don’t like the idea that balance is the best we can hope for. I don’t like the implication that everything good must come at an equal cost, or that nothing can ever be purely beneficial. And yet, in practice, almost every action we take seems to involve some kind of trade-off. The global financial crisis offered a clear example of this. Many people convinced themselves that enormous profits could be generated without risk, only to discover—too late—that the risk had simply been hidden, deferred, or misunderstood. Just because we can’t see what we’re paying for something doesn’t mean it’s free.

Does this mean the world is fundamentally a zero-sum game, where one person’s gain must always be another’s loss? Is it impossible for everyone to win at once?

Nothing is perfect. –English saying

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

There’s a common saying in English that nothing is perfect. In other languages, a similar observation is made, but with an added turn toward the divine: perfection is acknowledged as real, just not attainable by humans. I find that contrast interesting. It suggests that while we recognize imperfection everywhere we look, we also can’t quite let go of the idea that perfection exists somewhere, even if only in theory. The very fact that we can imagine perfection at all seems to imply that we haven’t fully accepted “breaking even” as the ultimate ceiling for the moral universe.

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

Despite our skepticism toward idealism, and despite our tendency to mock people who dream too big, there’s a deep and persistent human longing for moral progress. Religions often express this longing through visions of enlightenment, salvation, or paradise. Even in secular contexts, the same impulse appears. Some futurists imagine a coming age in which technology will solve humanity’s moral and material problems, transforming not only society but the universe itself into something closer to perfection. These visions differ in their details, but they all share the same underlying belief: that the future can be better than the present in some profound, almost transcendent way.

“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

The danger comes when we begin to believe that this progress is inevitable. If moral improvement is guaranteed, then individual effort starts to feel unnecessary. If balance is the default state of the universe, then someone else will always pick up the slack. In this way, optimism can quietly slide into passivity.

It’s easy to interpret famous claims about moral progress as meaning that justice will eventually prevail on its own, without human intervention. But history suggests otherwise. Many of the most enduring injustices in society were not accidents. They were the result of deliberate policies and intentional decisions. And if harm was done on purpose, it won’t undo itself by accident. Ignoring injustice doesn’t cause it to fade; it allows it to harden.

I tend to interpret hopeful statements about moral progress not as predictions, but as challenges. The moral universe doesn’t bend itself toward justice. It has to be bent—slowly, imperfectly, and with sustained effort. In practical terms, that means actively repairing damage rather than assuming time will take care of it. It means acknowledging that balance is not the same thing as fairness, and that stability is not the same thing as peace.

The idea that balance is the natural state of the moral universe can be comforting, but it can also be dangerous. It encourages the belief that inaction leads to harmony, that peace emerges automatically, and that the present moment represents the best we can do. I don’t know whether humanity is morally breaking even. No one does. But I do know that assuming balance will eventually assert itself without our deliberate moral effort is a way of quietly surrendering the future.