Why not begin with a bang? I have been thinking about this particular issue since one of my education/pedagogy classes from a local community college. I don't remember the content of the particular class but I do remember driving home thinking "wow, people actually do believe that now" I had heard the myth quite a few times before but had always thought of it as PC propaganda, I was shocked that night to realize that the purveyors of the propaganda seem to be actually drinking their own koolaid. I suspect that any of you who actually read this will either be shocked and appalled at what I have to say, or will be rather incredulous that anyone believes the myth and will think it rather foolish of me to argue against such a patently absurd proposition in the first place. Either way please let me know.
The myth of balance is the idea that all people have a sort of "balance" or positive traits. The suggestion is that while some people have certain strengths, these strengths are "balanced" in them by corresponding weaknesses which may themselves be someone else's strength; ultimately resulting in a sort of strength/weakness egalitarianism in the human race. Thus one child may be exceptionally bright when it comes to mathematics but it is expected that she "makes up" for it by having poor social skills or being an athletic clutz. Some other student will be generally "well rounded" meaning that they don't exhibit any particular strengths or weaknesses. Finally there may be a student who seems to have nothing going for him whatsoever but it is expected that he is a particularly good hearted sort of person or that he lives in circumstances which his classmates would handle much more poorly .
The myth is especially common among teachers but I hear it popping up all over the place. Most often I run into it in people who are either good heartedly trying to figure out how show or say that they value some other person whom they have just accused of having some tremendous deficit; "yeah he really can't keep his temper but boy is he good at math". Sometimes it shows up as an attempt at humility after someone receives a complement; "I'm glad you liked my poem but boy was I bad at math in high school". In both situations I think the person using the myth is trying to avoid the appearance of believing in a hierarchy of being. No one wants to come across as believing that any one person is better than any other person.
This is a problem because some people clearly are better than other people. The exceptionally bright math student may actually be polite, well intentioned, a great athlete and working hard to improve her character. Mother Theresa may not have had any profound weaknesses, of course she may have but we are under no obligation to assume so. Furthermore if you spend five minutes I'm reasonably certain that you could come up with a list of people, past and present, whom you believe to be better than yourself. (If you can't then should I congratulate you on sainthood or set you free from the basement you must have been imprisoned in since birth?) The superiority and inferiority of the many members of this human race is patently obvious, to deny it would involve a strange attempt to find faults in Ghandi and virtues in Stalin.
In fact, the myth is so weak that I can not find a single argument to set up in support of it. The only reason I can think of for believing the myth is one I have already alluded to, that people use it so as not to sound like elitists. We feel bad if we don't say it. And this, I will guess, is because we want so badly, and so rightly, to believe that everyone has value. The value of each individual is certainly an important belief and to the extent that the myth perpetuates it in our minds, the myth does some good, but not very much. In fact even here the myth does quite a bit of damage (lies are like that).
Each individual does have infinite worth, and they have it as a result of being human. Not by any other means.The myth would lead us to believe that people have worth on the basis of their strengths, moral, academic, athletic, artistic or any other. It argues that we have to insist that any one persons strengths are matched in any other person in other areas. This is well intentioned but it begins with a lie. Ironically it is an incredibly elitist lie. It then trains its followers to try and fabricate strengths in other people in order to see those people as valuable. But if those people are valuable regardless and indeed are of infinite worth regardless of their strengths then is it not demeaning and insulting to say to them "you are valuable because you are extremely artistic or spiritual or moral or discerning or intelligent"? Isn't that the same as telling them "you are only as valuable as your traits and if you lost all your abilities tomorrow you would loose all value in my eyes."
So I would suggest that all people are beings of infinite worth but are as complexly superior and inferior to one another as could possibly be. We are beings of incredible variety becoming ever more and less like our perfect Father but each the treasured, beloved apple of His eye. Regardless of what we do, He loves us not because of what we can do but because of what and who we are.
