Restoration of Balance

If Spiderman has “With great power comes great responsibility,” The Dark Knight Rises has “There’s a storm coming, Mr. Wayne. You and your friends better batten down the hatches. Because when it hits, you’re all going to wonder how you ever thought you could live so large and leave so little for the rest of us.” The warning was uttered by Catwoman, an outlaw, who, together with the League of Shadows, is determined to do what it takes to restore balance in society.

           

            But what is there to balance? Statistics show that the financial condition between the rich and the poor has become vast, even uncontrollable. This consequently slings power in the monopolizing hands of the former, and the perceived solution is to give it back to the rightful wielders, the people.

            What does it take to restore balance? According to the means employed in the movie by the propagandists, terrorize with a nuclear bomb, deinstitutionalize law, try cases with exile or death as punishment, blackmail the rescue team to open fire on those who seek external refuge, free the criminals, stall the economic market, cut any outside communication, cripple any potential leader of the opposition, win the trust of the biggest industry and bring it down from the inside. They all seem to demand a lot from someone, but the collective distaste of the situation marked by the overriding phenomenon of passion over reason makes them all plausible.

            The most striking part of the orchestrated blasts and gasps of horror and discomfort is when the very woman who aided in its completion realized amid the resulting chaos and lawlessness that this is not what she asked for. Why does man almost always fail to notably foresee the detrimental implications? Indeed, regret comes at that precious moment when everything turned into disarray.

What she dreamt of fulfilling is a world where everyone freely and equally enjoys the fruits of nature and mankind, but at what cost? Restoration of balance defined according to the terms of the League of Shadows comes with scandalous sacrifices. Homo homini lupus. When man is a wolf to his own kind, all imaginable monstrosity can be expected. At such an instance, one is led to comprehend that perhaps the situation then was a necessary evil to prevent a greater one, perhaps balance is not necessarily quantitatively equal but qualitatively. For when power is vested on those who are clueless as regards how a society must be run, every activity would be driven by revenge, and humanity would be left to revert back to the theoretical state of nature.

            Societal imbalance is not only corrected through violence alluding to historical uprisings, but also through reasonable argumentation. It is not wise to repeat history. The world is a witness to the growth of minority representations, albeit not usually speedy. By this token, sectoral interests can be objected without recourse to atrocious activities. After all, man is a rational being and what best nurtures him in this exclusive degree is its exercise.