Korra Season 2 Part 4

[Fuzzy Necromancer]

You know what Air Nomads contributed to the balance?

Fun.

Remember when Aang is sledding with Katara, and she goes "I feel like a kid again", and he says "You ARE a kid?" There was room for childhood in Aangs time. There is none in the endless war that Katara was born into.

It may seem weak, or shallow, or frivolous to you, but the Air nomads brought joy into the world. That is the first casualty of war. The stuff that makes life worth living is replaced with dread necessity and brutal survival.

[TrueMetis]

This actual brings up something interesting, what evidence do we actually have that any sort of balance was upset because of the Air Nomad genocide? Like literally what would be different if the air nomads where alive? Nothing, except maybe the Fire Nation would have used the comet on the Earth Kingdom for their first strike instead. From a practical perspective nothing would change, the FN would go on it's merry conquering way, except the Air Nomads would be sitting their all pacifistic, above worldly concerns and just watching it instead.

Spiritually, we're given not a signal sign that there's anything wrong. We see one pissed off and smashy spirit in Hei Bei, who was pissed off and smashy because his forest burned down, and would have been pissed off and smashy no matter the reason it was burned down. Indeed we're only ever told it was the FN, we see no proof. It could have been natural, it could have been one of the villagers by accident, which would explain why he was smashing up their village. Though given the location of the village and shrine it wouldn't matter since it was probably their responsibility to care for both the Shrine and the forest. The other we see was La, but he only acted because his wife was directly killed, couldn't give two shits when the NWT was attacked, and needed the avatar's help to do anything anyway.

Umm I think it is pretty clearly established that the characters, show runners etc. are taking balance to include the balance (harmony) between people, the nations etc. Evidence of that would be the opening narration of every episode, Aang being lectured by his last lives about the need to take out Ozai, that the first avatar dies in a war with a sense of failure (as if war = imbalance somehow) and so on. So your starting by saying lets just ignore all that imbalance?

Well yeah, because we're not given any evidence of that imbalance. Look man I'm part of a group of people that was nearly wiped out. As much as I would love to believe that the damage done to my people has caused the world to be fundamentally imbalanced, that just doesn't sync with reality. Real life genocide, as horrible as they are, did not upset any balance, real life wars, as horrible as they are, did not upset any balance. It didn't matter who was wiped out, it didn't matter who won the war. In the grand scheme of things the balance was fine. And I see no reason not to apply that same thinking to the ATLAverse. The only point given otherwise is the word of a guy who feels like he failed. Except one of the big themes of the show, is that people who think they failed do really stupid things to make up for their perceived failing and restore their "honour". Roku thinks the avatar needs to stop the war. Kyoshi didn't bother with Chin until he was attacking her home. What's the avatar supposed to do during a war? Seemingly whatever the avatar wants.

Next I think you've missed important characterization of the Air Nomads. Aang was friends with Fire Nation people and with Earth Kingdom people. The implication to me was the Air Nomads temples may have been remote but the Air Nomads as the name implied wandered the world and so interacted with the other nations. The Air Nomads may have been the least insular of the nations and so it seems reasonable to speculate that had they existed they would have continued to build bridges between cultures which would have worked against war and towards peace. Also they were the most spiritual so they probably would have helped people commune with the spirits etc.

If you want to speculate that that's the case go for it, but I'm not going to buy it from a culture who's ultimate goal is detachment from the world.

Also given Aang, who is the avatar, was taught nothing about communing with the spirits, I seriously doubt the Air Nomads spiritualism covered being a shaman. The Air Nomads are Buddhist monks. They want to detach themselves and obtain enlightenment. They are spiritual, because they avoid the kind of shit that would lead them to having to deal with spirits.

It is perhaps a little heavy handed to be just told that the Fire Nation burned down the forest rather than showing it, but that does not negate it as evidence that the Fire Nation was being unbalanced. If you want to just ignore that fine, but that is different from it not being evidence.

It's really not. At this point I have to wonder what the hell your definition of balance is. Because if "burning down a forest" makes a group imbalanced than balance is an impossibility. Moreover the point of me bringing it up has nothing to do with the Fire Nation, only that the spirit that got pissed off did not care about the cause of the forest burning down, just that it was. Perfectly natural lightning would have caused the same rampage. You gonna tell me the lightning is imbalanced.

Other imbalances Zhao killing the Moon, I think you think that is just Zhao, but to me it is pretty clearly supposed to be emblematic of the attitude that Sozin and the war etc. imbue in the elite of the fire nation. An unbalanced attitude that leads to unbalanced acts and an unbalanced world and there is plenty more.

I don't know why you think this is an argument against my position, since I brought up this as an example in my favour. Yes this is an example of knocking things out of balance, which is why we actually see the spirits intervene. The war itself however, is apparently not enough to provoke any sort of intervention.

Likewise burning all the books in the library about the Fire Nation was unbalancing to that owl spirit (which might have lead him to side with Unulaq for example) and again I take it as emblematic of the Fire Nation (even if in theory it might have just been Zhao again).

I really don't think you understand what imbalance means in a spiritual context. It doesn't just mean "bad shit happens". Though again, it took direct action against a spirit to cause it to do something. The war apparently, does not count.

In the Painted Lady there was the lake that was a polluted mess thanks to the Fire Nation (harassing a spirit), again I took it that it was emblematic of the Fire Nations imbalance, I assume that was typical of the lengths to which the war efforts had pushed the Fire Nation to destroy the environment in the name of keeping up the war machine etc.

And yet we find again the spirit being harmed isn't doing anything. That's kind of weird isn't it? I mean a different spirit smashed up a village because the forest where its shrine was located was burned down. The painted lady had her river polluted but didn't act out. It's almost like there's a bit more to how spirits work than you seem to think. Think on this, Hei Bei's shrine was in the middle of the forest, neglected. The villagers on the river, however, clearly still venerated the Painted Lady.

Your ignoring that Sozin kicked off killing dragons that lead to the near extinction of dragons. Sounds pretty unbalancing to me and again emblematic of how reckless and unbalancing the Fire Nation became during the 100 years war. Also since you want to talk Air Nomads seems like they might have set up a refuge for the dragons if they had been around which would have been balancing.

Seriously man, what do you mean when you say unbalanced? Animals go extinct. It happens, every instance of it is not a world shattering event. What's the big consequence of the dragons going extinct? Like dragons are literally the progenitors of firebending. You'd think some spirit or another would be pissed off about them being driven to near extinction, yet nothing.

Also, its unclear in the show, but it seems like maybe the Fire Nation might have hunted the Sky Bison to the brink of extinction also, so copy paste what I just said about dragons (Appa was the only one around after Aang woke up, people found it unusual as if they had never seen one, I think the website for Korra said luckily they found some more which led to those seen in Korra).

I always assumed that farmers were a far more likely culprit in this case. Sky bison's eat a lot.

So while they did not spend 61 episodes exhaustively cataloging how the Fire Nation disrupted the balance between the nations, between people and nature, between people and spirits and so on. I think they gave us some characterization of an attitude and backed it up with some depictions of that attitude and behaviour resulting from it in order to allow us to conclude that yes the 100 years war disrupted a lot of things and was perhaps not completely untypical of the succession of the world for 10 000 since the spirit portals were closed, judging by how the first Avatar ended up dying. Again if you don't like those parts of the show feel free to ignore them, but that is different from them not giving us evidence...

Right, but none of those disruptions are beyond anything we'd see in real life, often they are actually much less severe. But the ATLAverse is not the real world, it contains spirits. Spirits who smash shit when they get mad. And yet, even though instances of such should be happening fucking everywhere, we aren't seeing that. The spirits of air aren't livid that their chosen people were nearly wiped out and pounding the Fire Nation with hurricanes. Earth spirits aren't fighting off those invading their home. And the water spirits are pretty chill even though a high ranking officer, and therefore representative, of the Fire Nation actually killed what is by any reasonable definition an actual fucking deity.

I think the issue here might be one of definition, when I say balance I don't mean everything equal, or everything staying the same. I mean a dynamic equilibrium. Let's look at some of your own examples of imbalance to see the difference. You think the sky bison and dragons nearing extinction is proof the the imbalance. Is it? Or is it proof of the balance being kept? Dragons are a big ass flying predator, the sky bison a big ass flying herbivore. Dragons almost certainly ate sky bison. Indeed dragons are certainly the only predators sky bison would have. If one suffers a population collapse, than you've got a bit of a problem. If it's the dragons, the bison will proliferate unrestrained, and that would be really bad. If it's the bison the dragons will need to look for other sources of food. That would also be really bad.

It's not nice, though no one ever said the balance need be nice, but if the FN wiped out both the dragons and the sky bison, then they very well may have maintained the balance.

To use a more real world example, the extinction of the dodo didn't upset any balance. It sucks for the dodo, but imbalance doesn't just mean bad thing. Our current impact on climate on the other hand, is upsetting the worlds balance, and may very well lead to a mass extinction event. And you can bet that if spirits were real, they'd be fucking us hard over the damage we've done.

You know what Air Nomads contributed to the balance?

Fun.

Remember when Aang is sledding with Katara, and she goes "I feel like a kid again", and he says "You ARE a kid?" There was room for childhood in Aangs time. There is none in the endless war that Katara was born into.

It may seem weak, or shallow, or frivolous to you, but the Air nomads brought joy into the world. That is the first casualty of war. The stuff that makes life worth living is replaced with dread necessity and brutal survival.

Meh, those kids in Be Sing Se playing football, or earthball or whatever, seemed to be having plenty of fun to me. Fun isn't often a casualty in war, even in the most extreme situations people find a way to have fun. WW1 had instances of both sides stopping and playing soccer over Christmas. And the war with the Fire Nation was no WW1.

In traditional Inuit culture Katara could be married at her age, (though the creators obviously sanitized this a bit) her not being a kid has as much to do with her living in an extreme environment as it does the war. She's not really seen doing anything that wouldn't be expected of her in a traditional Inuit village at her age.

[AllanO]

Well yeah, because we're not given any evidence of that imbalance. Look man I'm part of a group of people that was nearly wiped out.

You can make that case for any purported imbalance, just widen your perspective and a major disruption becomes a slight hiccup in the dynamic equilibrium of the world. So Zhao killed the Moon, so what? Moon's actually crash into planets all the time in our universe heck whole stars and black holes smash together releasing energy greater than a supernova its all natural and balanced. Sure all life that depends on tides might have died but evolution would take care of things soon enough. It is just part of life we need to just learn to live with it is not universe threatening imbalance. Yeah the ocean spirit got a bit mad but that was just his personal reaction, not some universal imbalance and so on. If we can downplay the suffering and angst of humans then why not spirits? Spirits are just slightly more durable slightly more powerful intelligent entities. The ocean and Moon are just two little spirts who cares if they get a bit cranky or even die, it happens.

I suspect you will not say what I call hiccups (killing the Moon) just are imbalance and that would be part of the point. To me wiping out all dragons (or Air Nomads etc.) is intended to be an example of imbalance even if it has no greater knock on effects you can't just say well x is not an imbalance it it has no more knock on effects after x because if you do then nothing would ever be an imbalance, I just define an incident like Zhao killing the Moon disrupting the tides, disrupting that life, causing the Ocean to kill some people as x, and well after all that there are no more knock on effects so if you just ignore x then there was no imbalance caused.

So who says the world with open spirit portals was unbalanced? Sure to the few around humans forced to live on the back of lion turtles things looked bad, but that was just their perspective, they were biased by the fact that the spirits kept trying to kill them or turn them in to freakish animal or plant hybrids, so what? If human displacement and suffering do not make a difference to the balance then it really sounds like the world was ticking along just fine. So closing the portals was in no way justified by seeking balance and so on. The jumping off point for this was whether or not opening the portals would serve balance, I am not clear under your interpretation of "balance" that it made any difference one way or the other, so Korra is tots justified in leaving them open.

Look I was avoiding defining balance because I do not see what my definition of balance matters. What matters is whether the show runners managed to suggest one by the stuff that went on in the show. I think there is the suggestion of one and it makes sense of much of what is depicted there. This does not make it definite or without problems etc. Part of the issue is not so much whether balance is a dynamic equilibrium already mentioned is a question of how much deviation is just actually an imbalance, another is how we talk about moving from one equilibrium to another, imagine a reservoir that is the result of a bunch of inflows and outflow say the reservoir goes from being about 200 feet deep for decades to in another set of decades being about 180 feet, both level are nice balances, but I say the move between those two balance points was a time of imbalance. Just to make things concrete here is how the show made me think about it, when the Fire Nation set up its colonies in the Earth Kingdom that created an imbalance in the relations between the nations, strife, war, massive migration of refuges and so on. At the end of the war some of the colonies were dismantled, but it would cause too much disruption (imbalance) to dismantle them all and so the United Republic was set up, a new order, a new balance. The state before the war was (at least some of the time) a balance with the four nations separate, the new order with the United Republic is a new balance and precisely because the two are different and balanced I think we can allow that the time between them was a time of imbalance where unbalanced forces were making it impossible for things to find an equilibrium leading to a new one. Balance is not the same thing as nice etc. but imbalance definitely creates disruption, trouble, not nice things and balance is supposed to be a condition for health, flourishing, nice things and so on. You are writing off the disruptions because they could be explained by the natural push and pull of events, but I think its clear they are caused by a changing state of equilibrium.

Look you can find the definition of balance the show is using vague, maybe it contradicts itself allowing one thing as balancing and viewing a parallel case as imbalance, inconsistent in how it motivates people, at odds with how you think the world should work and so on. Great but people can make the same accusation against your definition of balance and so on and that is different from their being no evidence of imbalance being shown in the story. It would just be an uncompelling set of evidence or narrative and so on, not that it is not there. For example I think their depiction of Vaatu and Raava ends up coming as more good vs. evil when it seems to be meant as more of a dynamic equilibrium of opposing forces, they do things to suggest they meant it be taken as a dynamic equilibrium but then undermine it by basically just equating Raava to good and Vaatu to evil, sort of like how you are accusing me of equating balance with just being nice, but that is different from saying they either did not give evidence for the dynamic equilibrium or did not give evidence for the good/evil dichotomy, they did both they just don't sync well as a whole.

Just one tangential point spirits seem really bad at guarding their own interests. Hei Bei did not plant more trees etc. he just attacked some villagers which did not seem to do him or the forest etc. much good. So not sure we can conclude form what the spirits do or do not do that much about balance. Now consider the Painted Lady not apparently doing anything about the pollution is just par for the course, she probably just kidnapped random hikers or maybe she was paralyzed by the pollution that destroyed the lake and so on. She did show up at the end to give an enigmatic "at a girl" and that is enough for me. Most if not all explanation of the spirits behaviour requires lots of speculation I would say your explanations are no exception.

[TrueMetis]

Well yeah, because we're not given any evidence of that imbalance. Look man I'm part of a group of people that was nearly wiped out.

You can make that case for any purported imbalance, just widen your perspective and a major disruption becomes a slight hiccup in the dynamic equilibrium of the world. So Zhao killed the Moon, so what? Moon's actually crash into planets all the time in our universe heck whole stars and black holes smash together releasing energy greater than a supernova its all natural and balanced. Sure all life that depends on tides might have died but evolution would take care of things soon enough. It is just part of life we need to just learn to live with it is not universe threatening imbalance. Yeah the ocean spirit got a bit mad but that was just his personal reaction, not some universal imbalance and so on. If we can downplay the suffering and angst of humans then why not spirits? Spirits are just slightly more durable slightly more powerful intelligent entities. The ocean and Moon are just two little spirts who cares if they get a bit cranky or even die, it happens.

Actually given that I point to this as one of the times the spirits actually did something, that very much did upset the balance. That's kind of the central point. When the balance is upset spirits act out. The more spirits that acts out, and the more powerful the spirits that are acting out, the worse the imbalance is. In eastern philosophy there are some really malevolent spirits, but when things are going okay they can't do much. But if the balance is upset, they come out to play. Now I don't expect the avatar writers to release a Jorōgumo on someone or have one of the kind of spirits the show up when the unsanctified dead are around show up. But if one of the premises of the show is that the main character is a super shaman that bridges the mortal and spiritual realms, and that the world balance is upset. Than that should be shown in how the spirits act.

So who says the world with open spirit portals was unbalanced?

Well the constant conflict between humans and spirits is a pretty decent indicator. I had thought I had made it pretty clear that I considered how well humans and spirits are getting along to be a good barometer of how balanced things are.

Like smashy Hei Bei = things unbalanced, even if the actual consequences for everyone in the world for a burnt forest are nil.
Smashy La = things unbalanced, consequences are going to be pretty severe for most of the world.
Constant fighting with the spirits in the lion turtle time = things unbalanced. Severe consequences for everyone who wants off the turtles.
100 year war = Balance seems to be all right all things told. Spirits don't seem to be all that bothered by everything that's happening. Sure things my suck for the people, but the spirits aren't pissed off, and malevolent yokai aren't running around unchecked.

This is another thing, an imbalance need not be world scale. Smaller imbalances happen. If humans mess with the flow of a stream, and a local spirit lives there, that may just have caused enough of an imbalance to cause the spirit to retaliate. Of course, spirits may not have human morals, but they are different. So what might cause an imbalance in one place, may not cause such in another. Maybe you're local river spirit will go apeshit if even the slightest change happens. But mine is a pretty chill dude who will let me do pretty much whatever as long as I give him an offering of Saki every so often.

[AllanO]

Actually given that I point to this as one of the times the spirits actually did something, that very much did upset the balance. That's kind of the central point.

So the basic problem is that your definition of balance does not seem to be much like the one that seems to be operating in the show (or indeed like the ones on offer in many of the philosophies and religions that inspire the show). What matters is that Korra is motivated by her (or Raava's etc.) definition of balance, not yours, at least in answer to the question of what imbalances Korra might be responding to in keeping the portals open.

So first the appeasing angry spirits that is just clearly not the only kind of balance the show implies (or even states) the avatar has to be concerned with as I said, they included implications like things like war is an imbalance. Your demanding the spirits be visibly involved, but that is no where stated to be required in the show, the Avatar is expected to do a lot that does not directly concern disembodied spirits wrecking stuff. Also it is equally a part of eastern spirituality/thought to apply the idea of balance in a much wider way then just the appeasement/activity of spirits. The basis of Taoist medicine is that health is caused by balance of bodily forces (yin-yang etc.) sickness by imbalance and so on. You are being weirdly narrow given both the show and its influences....

Second the separation between spirits and humans (actually any living beings including plants like that big old tree) is an illusion in the show and in at least some eastern philosophies. In the show humans have a spiritual component to their nature which is why they can project into the spirit world, reincarnate and so on indeed some become all spirit like uncle Iroh. As Guru Pathik suggest separation is an illusion including the division spirit and human. This is not inconsistent with teaching of actual Indian religion such as that the Vedanta concept that atman (the individual soul of a human, animal or plant) is brahaman (the divine world soul). So a conflict between humans is a conflict between spirits, suffering of humans is suffering of spirits and so on. Your definition of balance might work in a world where humans are not spirits, but that is not the world of Avatar...

Finally I'm just confused by your reference to the dodo and so on. I thought the real world analogy was the controlling part of your definition of balance and followed that. Looking at my dragon example again, so if there was a dragon spirit who would die with the dragons then it would be imbalance to wipe them out? This thing gets really sensitive to factors we can't easily track. How do we know wiping out the dodo did not kill or piss off a spirit and so on? I think these two threads in your argument (imbalance = conflicts involving spirits matter vs. real world lack of big consequence to extinction events illustrate what balance) are pulling in very different directions.