The first step towards moderation is extremism.*
Some might see this as a bold, unsubstantiated claim. So allow me to qualify it a little:
For some of us, the first step towards moderation is extremism.
Today, the word moderation comes attached with, at least in some contexts, a negative connotation. It is linked to a sense of indecisiveness, or to a failure to let go of oneself in order to truly savour what one is doing at a given moment. Whether one is drinking in a pub, eating during Christmas, or cracking jokes bordering on rudeness with friends, to be moderate today appears as a form of soft asceticism. Nevertheless, the old principle continues to have a significant amount of force, and hence cannot be pushed aside nor ignored. What is required here is honest and sincere critique.
More popular in some circles is the word ‘balance’, particularly in the concept of ‘work-life balance’. One such circle is that of young professionals, especially those who feel somewhat alienated from their labour in the corporate world. Balance thus appears as a way to keep one’s sanity, to assure oneself that one is not merely a cog in the gargantuan machine driven by Capital and hierarchy but that one also has other identities: the marathon runner, the NGO volunteer, the social justice activist, the lay evangelist, the bedroom musician, etc.
One problem with both the notions of moderation and balance, however, is that they involve keeping various balls up in the air and not letting any (or at least many) of these slip out of their semi-elliptical arcs and crash onto the ground. Or to invoke another image, it involves shifting one’s weight around on one foot while to the rest of one’s limbs are tied objects of differing weights. How many of us can maintain such feats of circus-level skill? What commonly happens is that either the juggling/balancing act ends in a mini-tragedy (such as burnout), or one ends up a master of the act but incapable of mastery in specific ways — that is, one fails to go beyond an intermediate level of competence in any of the components of one’s spectacular performance. Balance, in other words, often leads to mediocrity.
Let’s examine things from a slightly different direction and consider the value of excess, which is a form of extremism. Lord Illingworth, a charcter in Oscar Wilde’s A Woman of No Importance says at one point of the play, “Moderation is a fatal thing… Nothing succeeds like excess.” Such excess, I venture to add, may be in the direction of either abstention or enjoyment. A person who refrains from eating meat is equally excessive as a person who has a large steak every evening. The position of the moderate in this opposition of extremes is clear: one should eat a reasonable, sustainable amount of meat, but not too much.
However, I believe a case for excess, for extremism can be made based on two little points. Firstly, the moderate drinker or eater of meat is attempting to limit consumption, but is often tempted with an abundance of these things. Take for example a house party with a truckload of booze, or a barbecue with kilograms and kilograms of meat. Alcohol and meat have the defining characteristic of most things that are harmful in excess: having a little bit increases one’s desire to have a little bit more, and then some more, ad infinitum. For some of us, the only way to avoid the harmful effects of excess in one direction is to draw a firm line on the ground and abstain. But secondly, even if one’s abstention is taken as a path towards someday being able to consume in moderation, there is a certain beauty in extremism that may make moderation seem less attractive. An extreme act or practice is a powerful way of demonstrating the ill-effects of a particular thing. It is, indeed, a form of truth-telling, or parrhesia according to Michel Foucault’s formulation of the word.
From these humble musings, my conclusion is this: for some of us, the first step towards moderation is extremism, but having done so, one may not want to take any further steps in that direction lest one sink into the murky quagmire where one’s practices are so sterile and lukewarm that a position of excess and extremism is where one knows one should be.
* This post was inspired by the words of Ivy Kwek, a friend of mine, spoke-written while we were discussing our choices to withdraw from Facebook, eat less (or no) meat, and so on.
Jasmine
/ February 7, 2012Thanks for your encouraging birthday wishes on my blog – unexpected on two counts (wish+blog)!
christianarchist
/ February 7, 2012You’re most welcome! Hope it was a meaningful one!