Extremes Are Nearly Always Bad

 

The emptiest and noisiest vessels out there are usually extremists in several of their beliefs – and, alas, they seem to be becoming more numerous with every passing year. Obviously the extremist to non-extremist is a broad spectrum, but the probability of someone being an extremist (like the Sorites paradox) increases when they display traits like excessively rigid beliefs, dogmatism, intolerance, lack of critical thinking, dismissal of alternative perspectives, and views that do not conform to empirical evidence or sit well against rigorous logical scrutiny.

Given that extremes are such bad and psychologically damaging places to be, it’s perhaps surprising that so many people are extremist in at least a few areas of their thinking. It’s also bad, of course, to be too far on the non-extremist end of the spectrum too – as almost every virtue taken to excess one way produces a negative outcome, and taken to excess the other way causes an equally undesirable outcome. To take Aristotle’s famous example; courage is a virtue, but if taken to excess amounts to recklessness, and if too deficient amounts to cowardice.

From this kind of wisdom, he postulated his equally famous “golden mean” – that it’s usually best to occupy the “mean” between almost any two extremes, to get the perspective of both extremes, but possess the requisite balanced, critical analysis and emotional discernment to comprehend the full, complex realty of the situation as best as you can.

To that end, when you encounter anyone who is shouting or pontificating from one extreme, or apathetically disengaged at the other extreme, I’d suggest they are usually untrustworthy or not not at the forefront of reasoned discipline.