ABSTRACT
Extremism arises when we feel we’re at a disadvantage and can’t legitimately compete. Infamously, presidential candidate Barry Goldwater said that “extremism in defense of liberty is no vice,” and promptly lost the election in a landslide to Lyndon B. Johnson. Extremism is always a vice, and is mindless competition’s illegitimate spawn. There is no way to tell who’s “best” on a global scale for any particular competition, only ways to determine who survived prior competitions to arrive at a final reckoning against others. We need to “exile” the extremes of mindless competition to a remote and distant part of our world. We believe that some disciplines require endless practice (basketball, surgery, piano) while others rely on visceral reactions to guide us (romance, hobbies, professions). Both are a kind of extremism in that believing that we’ve found something perfect in a relationship or “calling” is no different from believing we have to practice endlessly to master a trade or any endeavor.
