"Don't confuse symmetry with balance." -Tony Robbins
When was the last time that you picked up a fashion magazine? Page after page of unrealistically beautiful models produces a mesmerizing effect. A hypnotic trance designed to inspire awe. A state of unattainable other-worldliness. In truth, none of those images depict reality. They have all been digitally enhanced to manipulate our brain's attraction to symmetry, an instinct that predates human biology. In real life, symmetry is far more messy, and, counter to intuition, far more beautiful.
External symmetry has long been considered a marker of health in biology. Excluding the few counterexamples--snails, narwhals, fiddler crabs, caribou, flounders, and the like--symmetry plays an important role in sexual selection. The reason: asymmetries are usually indicative of genetic abnormalities and/or environmental stressors in excess to the organism's ability to overcome them, making them generally undesirable. However, when we look at internal asymmetry, this whole theory gets dismantled. Not a single creature or plant has a perfectly symmetrical internal organ system. Humans evolved with hearts on the left, livers on the right, and two unique brain hemispheres for practical, rather than aesthetic reasons. Ironically, inside of these asymmetries, there is a different, more elegant form of symmetry. One of functional balance.
Perfect symmetry is an illusion. Even in the most pristine examples (butterflies come to mind) we can find subtle variations. It is only through computer generated imagery that we encounter true symmetry, but these images are oddly disorienting. In our earlier example of the fashion magazine, the people we are viewing are not real. They are creations of a false perfection, and, therefore, somehow soulless. Most of us can recognize this disconnect, but some people lose their own souls to this machine of idol worship. Even though we seek symmetry, when we find it we are dubious. Perhaps, what we are actually seeking is the desire for perfection, and not the product itself.
The concept of yin and yang is pervasive across many Eastern philosophies. Two opposites that define, create, contain, and become one another. Drift too far into asymmetry and there is always an equal and symmetrical reaction to restore balance. A balance that is never static. It is forever fluctuation along a continuum of interacting forces. And implicit in that asymmetry is the notion that completion is always possible, yet also never complete. Life is a perfect illustration of this paradox. We will all some day come to an end, but from our deaths new life will flourish and eventually meet its own end. Symmetry creating asymmetry creating symmetry...