Photo by Mario Purisic on Unsplash

Whether it’s God or physics that dictates this, apparently things must go askew every once in a while for existence – of any form – to make sense.

I’ve long believed that our world (perhaps even the whole Universe) would have no sense being perfectly balanced in every way. What’s the purpose of things being any different later if they’re okay the way they are now, right? Or, why is there such diversity in nature? Maybe I’m asking all the wrong questions, but apparently George Bernard Shaw saw things in a similar manner.

If there was nothing wrong in the world there wouldn’t be anything for us to do.

– George Bernard Shaw

Shaw, who lived between 1856 and 1950, was an Irish playwright and a co-founder of the London School of Economics. The man was obsessed with society’s deepest problems. Besides writing scripts, he was also an essayist, novelist and short story writer. For this work, he focused on education, marriage, religion, government, health care, and class privilege.

As an wholehearted socialist, he was angered by the exploitation of the working class and wrote many brochures and speeches for the Fabian Society – a British socialist group seeking to advance the principles of socialism through gradualist and reformist means. In the promotion of its causes, Shaw became an orator. Much of this endeavor was directed at gaining equal rights for men and women, reigniting private ownership of productive land, promoting healthy lifestyles, and alleviating abuses of the working class. For a brief period of time, Shaw was also in politics.

He married Charlotte Payne-Townshend in 1898 and settled with her in Ayot St Lawrence in a house now dubbed Shaw’s Corner. Shaw died there at the age of 94 from complications to injuries incurred by falling from a ladder.