Picture a tight rope walker. What does he or she do? Minimize the side movement to allow for a steady push forward. And if the sway to and fro left and right becomes excessive he stops advancing and regains his composure. Progression depends on stability. We are all tight rope walkers on a cable known as life.
Let me offer another analogy. The human body shows one of the most clear cut sexual dimorphisms, difference between males and females. In a standard weight human, this allows for easy recognition of the gender of an individual but if you move to the end of the curve to either side, extreme thinness or morbid obesity, it becomes very hard to identify the sexes. Erased in the first case or drowned, hidden in the second, telltale characteristics disappear.
Both images point out to the middle line as a proper path. This is easy to transfer to basic personality traits or to abilities. If you rely almost solely on rational thinking, you are shutting down a whole side of your psyche along with lots of nice people just as you do if you rely on nothing but emotions. A too demure person is constrained by almost all persons around but inversely a too violent one is a danger to most. And yet, the calm soft discreet ones make life more bearable, a life that the harsh though ones are often better equip to defend, save or secure. Without the warriors, entire lands would have perished or left history but in peace time the fighter has to keep peace? Violence as necessary evil is a rare set-up and getting along a common one. If you are meek, learning not to be stepped on is a minimum skill to acquire just as if you are too tough, curbing your temper. On average, those that can maintain a middle ground lead calmer and happier lives.
The same of course applies to systems such as society or technical progress. Coming back to gender, equality of treatment should be an aim but it will never be a reality in toto. Paychecks vary and well they should since all do not work as hard or as well and to equal gain for the nation. Heck, if we were all shoemakers, what would we eat? Etc. Technically, if all humans owned a car, the road network would occupy more land than living quarters. And if we built elevators strong and large enough to carry the entire staff of a skyscraper in one sweep at morning, lunch and after work, the energy expenditure when a single visitor has to reach the 45th floor would be ludicrous. Again, it is matter of balance between minimal and maximal requirements. If your bath’s drain was big enough to empty it instantly, accidental opening would throw away even a large sized adult with the water, never mind a baby.
All of the above is what extremists of all types do not get. You have to find a middle ground. If everyone but you is wrong then the problem is you. Yours morals should seem adequate to you but you need not approve of all anymore than you are allowed to despise all. Respect others and treat them right but you need not like them. If, as some believe, Islam calls for djihad until the whole Earth is converted by force and considering that military balance of power does not favor Muslim nations to others then the end result would be that all Muslims eventually die as martyrs. And if that was so, each getting 72 virgins would lead to a strange Heaven where the rewards would outnumber the rewarded? In another more benign example of good faith in the secular realm this time, if we suppose two perfectly polite gentlemen to reach a door simultaneously, they should be stuck there for ever right? _”Please, sir, say one holding the door, after you!” _”Oh no, counters the other, I won’t have it. Be my guest,” _ “ No, no, you were here first!” Again, ETC.
Balance, middle ground is not an option; it is the option. Work hard at acquiring what you lack. What you have by nature will keep. The Romans of yore used to say : Mens sana in corpore sano, A healthy mind in a healthy body. If you are a dedicated intellectual, buy a gym membership and bodybuild … that way you’ll be able to carry your immense book collection if you have to move? Berzerkers should do zen as should the ever hurried ones but narcoleptics could do better with running than yoga classes. Fight your urges and your fears and learn to know what you don’t and accept what you doubt, its existence at least if not its truth.
The middle path is narrow but straight as the tight rope. By comparison, the rut of your way or the highway is a meandering river. And a straight line is as we know the shortest way.
Peace out, Tay.
Definitive Lapse of Reason 