A little opinion article on how moderation is the key to almost everything.
Moderation.
Who among us haven’t heard of this word? To those who hasn’t, Oxford would define it as the avoidance of excess or extremes, especially in one’s behavior or political opinions. It’s a balance, it’s staying in the middle, it’s being aware of the extremes. It’s something that you would think is universally understood and implemented, yet it’s also something that some people can’t comprehend. It’s something that you can see everywhere, in game difficulty sliders, in advertising of tobacco or alcohol products, in communities, wherever. Yet it’s also something that lots of people can’t implement themselves, especially in the form of self-moderation.
It’s a simple concept, yet to me, lots of the problems we have in our society is just a matter of self-moderation away from fixing itself. Everywhere you see, people do things, things that cause problems for others. All because they lack the ability to moderate themselves. Here’s a few of my observations.
First, Politics and Ideologies.
We all know how it is these days. You follow the parties and the personalities who you feel align with what you believe. You see that they’re campaigning — giving false promises — of policies you want to be implemented. You get charmed by their charisma, and you plead your lifelong allegiance and support to their campaigns. Some of you think of that ideology and policy so much, you choose to support them as hard as you can, turning their views — their words, their promises — into your personal religion. Going to the extremes, chanting kill the gays as the GOP Floridians did, or chanting destroy patriarchy, as the radical feminists did.
Like I don’t care what you choose to believe. These beliefs are strictly individual, it’s a subjective matter. But when politics gets extreme, things can only go downhill, and that’s an objective matter. All of this happens because you did not moderate your views well enough. You push yourself to the limits, and you are fine with it because you know you’re supporting the right party, you’re supporting to what is to you — the right ideology. You believe it’s the only way to all the problems in life, when in reality that extremeness in belief is the problem. You are stuck in your echo chamber, believing all is right and the opposition is duly wrong, stuck in an unmoderated void where you can scream whatever you want to believe without anyone criticizing you.
And you may ask, what is moderation then in politics? Centrism. Being dead center in the political compass, hitting the bullseye even. Being there is being fair, taking in information and beliefs from both sides of the spectrum, accepting that whichever wing of politics you follow doesn’t always hit the mark. It’s something that’s very cliche I know, it’s kind of a meme even. You know, those “ban this, support that, I just want to grill” stereotypes, often shown with a clip art of a man grilling burgers. It’s the one position in the political spectrum where you can truly think critically — or even just be apathic — and understand what you truly believe in. Sway too far left, and you’d be crazy enough to endorse and push for complete anarchy, sway too far the other way, and you’d be creating a dystopian nightmare only rivaled by Eurasia as envisioned by George Orwell. There’s a reason that there is even a political spectrum that is shaped like a horseshoe. Because extremes can only lead to a political wasteland, you just have to pick between statehood and non-statehood.
A truly successful government can only exist under a centrist leader anyway, one that rules democratically, yet autocratically. It’s a matter of balancing the two. Listen to the people but know when it’s your turn to rule and make decisions. Run it too democratically and the majorities may abuse it, or have conflicts and bureaucracies that last ages, outlasting the problem it’s trying to solve. Run it too autocratically and your people’s liberties are violated, you risk hurting a specific group or you risk having a government that is so tone deaf and up in the clouds that their policies only hurt the people they are supposed to serve. So why plead allegiance to one political extreme? Rethink it. Think independently. Vote for the policies and the governance you want in your country, not for your allegiance to your family’s lifelong political party affiliation.
Second, Religion and Cult-like behaviors.
Similar to the first one, religion is something that you plead your allegiance to as a human being. Highly expected even in some cultures. It’s a belief too, it’s very much as subjective as politics is, but even more extreme in most cases. Because when religion is in concern, people are taught from birth to follow it as bad as it might be to you. Politics have check and balances in the form of oppositions, but religion, you’d wish.
If there’s one thing that is clear to me through my 4 Introduction to Scientific Philosophy classes under one of my favorite lecturers is that religion, tradition, and pseudo-science, are dogmatic. It’s something that is true and is always true to anyone who believes in it. You cannot debate it, because to its believers, its absolute cause it’s the word of God. The word of a deity, one we can’t perceive, but one that coincidentally wrote a journal of stories and songs and wisdoms for us to follow. Us, mere humans in this round — or sometimes flat to some believers— and blue earth.
This is another form of extremism. Just like politics, it’s subjective and is very hurtful to either the believer itself or the people around them. Need an example? Look no further, jihadist culture is one of them. Those Muslims who dedicate their lives to keeping the sanctity of the Qur’an on the world and to spread the word of Allah. Those who would do anything, even terrorism and human rights violations to complete their goals. Like the Taliban, or the Islamist states in the Middle East. While some other believers of the greater Abrahamic religion oppose those Muslims, spreading hate because to them it’s blasphemy, threatening murder, or even just sending messages of hate like sending a severed pig’s head to a mosque.
Even outside the Abrahamic religion circle, in India we can see Hindu nationalist extremists pushing for the eradication of Muslims and other religious believers in their land. Normalizing the killings and the rapes of those who they deem is against Hinduism in any way in the land of the Hindi. It’s everywhere, there are cults for everyone, it doesn’t even have to be a religion or is a pseudo-religion like the Church of Scientology. And these cults get violent.
So again, you may ask, what’s the indicator of moderation in this one? Simple, just don’t be too strict with what your religion of choice believes in. Don’t just blindly follow your holy books textually, even positivist laws need contextual interpretations. Don’t be one of those people on Twitter responding to anything that is against the Islamic status quo with an obnoxiously annoying quote like…
“If the Qur’an says it’s haram, then your opinion is invalid.”
…or something like that. Or one of those white evangelists who believe that Jesus Christ was a white American man because they believe so. Religion is an individual thing, just like other social constructs like gender and personalities. Why do you think religions have denominations anyway? Construct and follow what you believe in, moderate it, don’t take it to the extremes.
And a third case study to round this article off, Sex.
Why sex you may ask? Why am I going this route in this opinion piece? Well, it’s one of the things that motivated me to write this article in the first place. Specifically, the lingering thought of misogynistic men defending themselves in violating women by saying that it’s the women’s fault that they dress in a way that is making them horny. This statement, this argument, it just sounds so deeply misogynistic and so objectifying that my disgust towards these men and just my general hate towards over-masculine men like these ones are amplified in a way.
Why does it bug me? It bugs me because blaming other people for what is essentially your own thirst and sex drive is just stupidly out of hand. Why? Because the problem here lies in the lack of self-control — hence, moderation — that these men have in controlling their thirst. The ones who blame women by saying the women are the ones who want to be raped or catcalled or whatever when the reality is they are the ones who cannot control their thirst for sex. Like it’s completely natural in a way for humans to have sexual impulses and desires, but what differentiates the good ones, and the bad ones are the self-control. Everyone’s different, each to their own right? But some of us can control when we express or exert our impulses better than others.
What’s worse is that this extremely misogynistic view on genders is almost normalized and is silently amplified by the way that any woman, in any clothing, as closed off as their skin might be, or as open as it may be, can and will be sexualized by a person. And again, I’d say it’s completely normal to have these thoughts, as long as you keep it to yourself. But this extreme lack of moderation materializes itself in the countless ways these same men violate women. It’s just shameful almost, to blame others for something that you can stop preemptively with enough self-moderation. And it bugs me, hence this article. I’d attach a tweet of one of these arguments but I’m way too lazy to go through my replies but trust me these people exist. And it’s almost normalized.
With that last one mostly off my own tangents, this article has been some ways that moderation is key to a less troublesome life. Like, it’s mostly my view here that I’m bringing, but feel free to reply to me or debate my views on these topics with me. The point is, moderation is important, it’s something that we need at all times, in handling and processing anything. It’s just way better to be a moderated NPC in comparison to being an extremist main character that hurts others for a living. That’s it I guess, thanks for dedicating nine-ish minutes of your time and attention for this once-in-a-motivation opinion piece of mine.
Author’s note as always: again, thanks for reading it so far down. I just had a thought after a seminar on authoritarianism and democracy earlier and how to me centrism feels so morally correct nowadays. Like it just is the way to go. And yeah, I wanted to write another one of these and here it is. So, I hope it’s relatively enjoyable and understandable because I’m writing here as a means for myself to practice journalism for someday in the future. Feel free to engage with me on any thoughts or whatevs. Night, peeps!
p.s. I have a draft for an overanalysis of EEAAO, but at this point idk if I will ever finish that one lmao. should I?
previously posted on Medium at https://medium.com/@fjello/moderation-5f45b65b1f4a
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