Why I Want To Be An Extremist (Left Wing, That Is)
Many people say they are "middle of the road" politically. Ignoring the clumsiness of the metaphor (do you get run over by "political traffic" going both ways? Which way, if any, do you "travel?"), i see a problem with this perspective. In order to know what and where the "middle" is we must know where the "ends" (the extremes) are.
To calculate the "median," the "highest" and "lowest" must be known, as well as all cases in between. If one of the extremes is not known or is misconstrued. the middle will not be known. Buddhism was "the middle way" in terms of ancient Indian spirituality but it is now "far out." In the 1930s the Swedish economic-political system was tauted as the "middle way." today it is considered extremelly left wing.
Since the late 1960s, the United States has moved significantly and consistenly to the "right" (toward fascism). Most people still consider themselves middle of the road even though that "middle" is very far to the right of where it was fifty years ago. One very hard piece of evidence for this is the distribution of income and wealth, In the 1920s, a few very wealthy families had a disproportionately high share of income, through the thirties, fourties, fifties and early sixties, that inequality was gradually whittled away, the share of income going to the wealthy went down a little, the middle class increased in size and prosperity, the numbers of the very poor decreased because of improving wages. Then, sometime, between 1965 and 1975 (the change was so silent and sublle that it was hard to tell just when it tipped) things began to return to "normal," to "the good old days" (which were actually bad times for people who were not middle and upper class white males). Only in the late 1980s did i begin to see this as a strategy on the part of the wealthy to keep and increase their wealth no matter what the cost to the non-rich or to the country. The Wealthy and their minions will not talk about personal wealth, but they will willing spend some of it in the pursuit of more, and even more in the political than in the economic arena. They use words like freedom, personal responsibility, values, but they seem to care little about any of these things. I notice that Gay rights are improving although half the country is opposed, while a minimum wage increase, which the vast majority supports seems to have little traction. We are told that economic inequality is explained by education and technology and the increasing challenges of administration; but these are lies. And if everybody is saying it, everybody is lying.
One area where i am expecially concerned with misplaced extremes is in the area of compassion. I see a world in which it is not possible to be too cold hearted (in terms of "matters of state," and "economic realities," such as the "war on terrorism") but it is possible to be "idiotically generous." In spite of the admiration we are encouraged to have for Jesus, Francis of Assisi, Ryokan, Mother Theresa of Calcutta, and the wise mystics of other cultures we are warned by otherwise enlightened people that we should not throw away our charity or unduly deprive ourselves in the service of others. This seems to me to put the "middle of the road" solidly on the side of greed, violence, and excess. We are less encouraged to respond to the needs of others if the behaviors of people like Ryokan or St Francis are considered "off the scale" of human possibility.
The late Native American elder and Franciscan nun, Jose Hobday would speak of the customs of some first peoples as including "an ethic of ridiculous generousity." But she used the word "ridiculous" in a tongue in cheek and approving manner. She would have liked Ryokan, who said to the man who robbed him: "I am sorry i had so little to give you." Ryokan was a Buddhist. But today i think he would have been acccused by Buddhist teachers as "idiotically generous." The word "idiot" would not be used tongue in cheek or approvingly.
No, i don't expect a lot of people to "give their bodies to be burned," for the sake of others, but if the teachings of Jesus or the example of Ryokan are considered "off the scale" of human possibility, i think the spiritual and social
lives of all of us are truncated. There ought to be at least as many examples of "idiot generousity" as their are of solipsistic excess. These may exist (I know almost nothing about Somali mothers) but, if so, we need to know more about them.