A Gain In One Realm Is Always Paid For By A Loss In Another
J. Glenn Gray was pursuing an academic career when, on the same day that his doctorate degree arrived in the mail, he received an induction notice and was drafted into the U.S. Army. As a counter-intelligence officer during World War II, he kept detailed journals of his wartime experiences, observations, and conversations with soldiers, civilians, and prisoners. Then some fourteen years after the war—drawing on his journals, recollection, and extensive reading of military history, wartime memoirs, and contemporary war novels—Gray wrote The Warriors: Reflections On Men In Battle. Surprisingly—as it goes against the grain of his obvious opposition to war—Gray begins with a chapter on the “enduring appeals” and “secret attractions” of battle. In it, talking about “the aesthetic appeal” of the “weird but genuine beauty” of battlefield scenes and products, Gray writes about the decline in the 20th century of the “artistic considerations” in the making of battlefield goods. In earlier times, Gray points out, renowned artists helped design impractically stylish weapons, gunsmiths prided themselves on the artistry of their creations, and soldiers wore colorful uniforms filled with intricate details and decorations. Over time, these artistic considerations gradually gave way to a focus on practicality, functionality, and mass production. It didn’t disappear—instead, the weird but genuine aesthetic beauty that attracts the would-be warrior shifted from the craft and color of weapons and uniforms to, during Gray’s service, “the expanse of vision and spectacle afforded by combat planes.” Though revolutionary, combat planes—with their “spectacular sweep and drama, a colorfulness and a precision”—were, Gray writes, just a modern expression of that same old weird but genuine “aesthetic appeal of war.” Contemplating how this enduring appeal has endured every generation of warfare, Gray writes, “What [is] lost in one realm is always compensated for in another.” (What was lost in the realm of style and craftsmanship, for example, was compensated for in the expanse of vision and spectacle). In the margin, I wrote, “reverse is true too: a gain in one realm is always paid for by a loss in another.”
That every loss is compensated for and every gain is paid for—that’s the theme of this SIX at 6.
Money And Control Are In Direct Proportion To One Another
Before casting any actors, director Kathryn Bigelow was given a $30 million budget to make the movie, The Hurt Locker. After filling her cast with relatively unknown actors, the financiers came around and demanded that she include some well-known actors to star in the movie. Bigelow didn’t want any well-known actors, knowing that audiences know, consciously or not, that if a “star” is going to die in a movie, it’s not going to be until somewhere near the end. And for what she was envisioning, it was important to keep the audience on edge, from the very opening scene, about whether or not characters would be killed. The financiers didn’t really care about her creative vision. They just wanted to de-risk their investment and casting movie stars is one of the most reliable ways to do that. Instead of giving in, Bigelow gave back $20 million and made the movie with relatively unknown actors for $10 million. “What I realized,” Bigelow said, “was that the budget and your creative control are in direct proportion to one another. So the lower the budget, the more creative control you have. Or if you want more money, you have to sacrifice and compromise creative control.” What is lost in the budget is compensated for in the creative control you have. Or what is gained in getting more money is paid for by a loss of creative control. (File next to: If you don’t take money, they can’t tell you what to do).
You Have To Say No To Say Yes
When asked, Lin-Manuel Miranda often says that Wait For It is the best song he’s ever written. “I was on my way to my friend’s birthday party,” Miranda explains, “when that idea showed up in my head.” He was riding the New York City A Train when “the whole chorus showed up in my head, all at once. I write it down, and suddenly, I see the shape of the whole song.” He got off the train, walked to his friend’s apartment, “and I go, ‘Hey, happy birthday man, I gotta go.’ I got back on the train, and I wrote the rest of the song on the way back home. You have to do that sometimes. You have to say ‘No’ to your friends to say ‘Yes’ to your work.” Saying “No” to something is compensated for by being able to say “Yes” to something else. Or whenever you say “Yes” to something, you’re saying “No” to something else.
The Pleasure-Pain Balance
In her book Dopamine Nation, Dr. Anna Lembke writes, “One of the most remarkable neuroscientific findings in the past century is that the brain processes pleasure and pain in the same place. Further, pleasure and pain work like opposite sides of a balance.” “And one of the overriding rules governing this balance,” she said, “is that it wants to stay level…With any deviation from neutrality, the brain will work very hard to restore a level balance—what scientists call ‘homeostasis.’ … With any stimulus to one side, there will be a tip of an equal and opposite amount to the other side.” The good feeling after doing a hard workout, completing a bunch of chores, facing a fear, taking an ice bath—pain in one realm is compensated for in another. Or the caffeine crash, a hangover, a comedown, the guilt after overindulging, the regret after cutting corners—pleasure in one realm is paid for by pain in another.
The Secret Wisdom of Trees
While trees require sunlight to grow, the strongest and longest-living trees don’t get much sunlight during their early years. Instead, they spend their first few decades “waiting patiently in their mothers’ shade,” Peter Wohlleben explains in The Secret Wisdom of Nature. Limited sunlight leads to slow growth. Slow growth leads to the development of dense, long-lasting wood. Youngsters without any shade, on the other hand, grow fast and therefore develop wood that is airy and susceptible to fungi, yeasts, molds, and mildews. “A tree that grows quickly rots quickly and therefore never has a chance to grow old,” Wohlleben writes. “Developing mighty trunks,” conversely, requires that a tree “struggle for every ray of sunlight.” The struggle in one realm is compensated for in another. Whereas what is gained in growing quickly is paid for by getting destroyed easily.
Each Thing Is A Half
In his essay, Compensation, Ralph Waldo Emerson writes that “an inevitable dualism bisects nature, so that each thing is a half.” Dark can’t exist without light. Left can’t exist without right. Hot and cold. Pleasure and pain. Up and down. Man and woman. Odd and even. In and out. In motion, at rest. Sickness, health. Peacetime, wartime. Strength, weakness. Order, chaos. More, less. Yes, no. “The same dualism underlies the nature and condition of man,” Emerson continues. “A certain compensation balances every gift and every defect. A surplusage given to one part is paid out of a reduction from another part…Every excess causes a defect; every defect an excess…For every thing you have missed, you have gained something else; and for every thing you gain, you lose something…If the good is there, so is the evil; if the affinity, so the repulsion; if the force, so the limitation.” What is lost in one realm is always compensated for in another. To gain something is to have given up something.