It occurred to me today that extremism is starting to become a prevalent problem.

My daughter Lilly will paraphrase two pages of text in thirteen words. My daughter Sarah will paraphrase two pages of text in 1.99 pages.

My Sunday School teacher from childhood told me once that the only appropriate sexual position is the missionary position. My best friend from college believes that all approaches to sexual gratification are acceptable.

Wayward Muslims with hate in their hearts flew planes into the Twin Towers in New York City and wayward Protestant supremacists with hate in their hearts lynched thousands of people in America in the 20th century.

You know what these all have in common, of course. They’re extremists.

The Oxford Dictionary defines the extremist as “a person who holds extreme or fanatical political or religious views, especially one who resorts to or advocates extreme action.” Because extremism is something that has, so many times throughout history, been demonstrably bad, you would think we would stop doing it. But, I wonder about a society that has yet to discover extremism as patently bad and to be avoided.

I have been noticing it a lot lately in the news: people occupying extremist positions in our society and actually having an audience of those who would agree with them. This must be the way that it has always been and I’ve just not noticed until now? I recently had to make changes in my own political party affiliations, because the party that I’ve been associated with for all of my life has recently been hijacked by extremists and I can’t abide by their philosophies and figurehead choices anymore.

Maybe this is just a part of the societal pendulum swing of which I have not lived long enough to be able to witness a full cycle? Maybe political parties have always had this motion in them, wherein people who would identify themselves with a certain party at a certain point would not be able to have the same affinity at a different point because of the motion of the party? Have the Democrats always been this leftist and have the Republicans always been so right-wing?

Maybe the problem is that we don’t know when we are occupying an extremist position, as individuals or in groups. And, moreover, who would we rely on to tell us? If my neighbor hears me going off about something and realizes that I am being an extremist, could he tell me so? Would I listen to him? If I reach out to my political party to let them know that they’ve gone a little too far off the rails for me to be comfortable, would it even matter?

I guess one of the ways that people tend to determine whether or not they are occupying an extremist position is to look around and compare themselves with those around them to see whether or not they are being extreme. First off, since extremists tend to surround themselves with other people that believe the same things, it would be hard for the one extremist to look at the other extremists around and say to them, “Hey, aren’t we being a little extreme, here?”

And I don’t want to get started on all of the problems that result from us looking around and comparing ourselves with each other. For all of the tears and misery that have been caused throughout history by this particular racket, it is a delicate endeavor for me to suggest that this is the way that we should go about determining whether or not we are as bad (or as good) as we think we are.

Another problem that we have here is that the scale is sliding. Those positions that would have been considered extremist in our society two or three decades ago are no longer so, because –as the societal views shift– the scale is moving.

Are you noticing that part of the problem here is all of the damn movement! Not only is my party moving its positions, and my society is moving its positions, but I end up moving my positions in response to the movements of my party and my society?!?! Why can’t we all just occupy a certain middle ground and stay there? If we could all just agree that…

Wait!

Before I write another word of that previous thought, I must say that I have come to an epiphany. For all of us to be able to avoid extremist positions, we would have to be able to agree to join up in the middle, together.

What would it take for that to happen?

This is another place where I think that the two party political system fails us as a society (don’t get me started on this topic, please!). When I look across the way at that group of people that I don’t agree with and I see what they are up to, it just burns my hide! So, I will react by doing something extremist in response. SO THERE! THAT’LL SHOW ‘EM!

During my undergraduate studies, I remember a philosophy class where I learned that Aristotle used to say, “In medio stat virtus”, which is to say the virtue lies in the middle. We all recognize that extremist positions are problematic. Can’t we agree to stop being so “out there”?