What is real harmony?

 Some people might argue that we don't really live in a harmonious world. Even the animal world demonstrates to us how creatures compete for survival and thus spread their progeny into the future generations. Poetic images also convey the natural world as one of competition, such as when animals are referred to as fighting "tooth and claw" for survival, or even the "fearful symmetry" of Blake's "Tyger Tyger" . This reflects an underlying belief that identity and selfhood is deeply connected to having a healthy body that can thrive and outlive other bodies. Given the fact that our bodies are subject to frequent bouts of illness and decay, is it safe to say that our world is in complete disharmony?

  Two perspectives can help to even out this view. One is that even when we say that things "lack harmony", in reality, most situations operate with some degree of causal predictability. Planting certain kinds of seeds will yield only certain fruits, for example, so it would be absurd to think that a melon seed is going to suddenly sprout into a carrot. From this perspective, there is always something that we can predict (with little or no variation). Some philosophers such as Spinoza have also suggested that all beings have a conatus, or a kind of inner principle that allows them to maintain structural integrity and remain as one thing and not another. With this view of the causal predictability and interdependence of things, could we not argue that all things are inherently harmonious?

    There is yet another argument embedded in this, and that is the idea that harmony is really an attitude of equalization. Rather than identifying my "self" as a very narrow element of the world, I may be said to naturally harmonize when I drop all identifications of "self' and "other". In this way, I am able to equalize all the elements and my mind doesn't move to one phenomena or the other. Then, when my mind does not discriminate between like and dislike, preferring "this" over "that", a natural harmony will settle over me. This is a different kind of harmony than one which involves trying to rearrange the furniture of my life according to how I think it should be. Rather, this harmony involves more deeply understanding my life as a complex interaction of many elements, both good and bad.