Extremists? Radicals? Fanatics? The Better Term Is "More-On"

There are so many names for total jerks. In psychology we call them narcissists, psychopaths, gaslighters, and dark-triad personalities. In politics, we call them tyrants, extremists, dictators, and fascists. In everyday life, we call them…well, too many terms to mention, many of them unmentionable.

I’d call them morons but by a distinct and precise definition. What distinguishes morons is right there in the word itself: Morons are folks who mindlessly pile more and more on of whatever they hold as their personally branded virtues. If they identify as tough, they can never have enough toughness. If they identify as freedom-loving, they can never have enough freedom. If they’re hooked on attention, they can never have enough of it, even if it’s all negative attention. They’re like people who discovered they like salt, declare themselves the salt kings, and pour whole canisters on every dish, even if it kills them. To a more-on, there’s no such thing as excess.

More-ons have found the thing that gets them high. Ever since, they’ve hammered away at it mindlessly, robotically, moronically like junkies. On the winding road of life, they veered right once. It felt like their big breakthrough, the last they’d ever need. Ever since, they’ve insisted that one should always veer right on winding roads.

You could call them extremists or radicals but not in comparison to some clear, established standard. We’re all extreme and radical by someone’s standard. Rather, they’re immoderate—actually anti-moderate—opposed to all moderation. They’re juggernaut nutcases barreling through all checks and balances, anything that could constrain their more-onic excesses.

They’ve found their signature virtue, and they’ll bang away on it till the cows come home, never mind the consequences. They've only got a hammer, so everything’s a nail.

Throughout history, revolutions have imploded, devouring their own. When the revolution wins, they have to lead, not just spout more-onic slogans, but their leaders only know how to compete more-onically over who hammers best. So they start hammering each other down. They’ve got their one thing. Their pride is branded to it like the salt king’s. They feel immortal because they’ve found the one thing they stand for. If they die, it will be a proud death. They’ll have died in the excess of their one more-onic cause, the sole source of their identity.

Being a more-on wins for a while. More and more more-ons pile on because the more-on leader’s one thing can be their source of pride too. More-onic movements are so simple they make every supporter feel like a genius. They’ve found the one and only thing that matters and they can never have enough of it.

Reality is suddenly becoming a way more complex place to live. Whenever that happens, we see more-on epidemics, one-trick phonies checking out of reality and into false claims that the answer is simply more of some one thing. The fascist and communist movements of the mid-20th century were like that. Mindless more-onic excess. Moron movements win for a while and then spin out.

Many a more-on insists you can never have too much of actually opposite virtues. For example, you can never have too much honesty and you can never have too much kindness. Never mind that honesty and kindness are often at odds—for example, when you're honestly feeling critical of someone who will regard the criticism as unkind, and could be right. This points to what's really going on with more-ons—and a tendency in all of us, actually.

Humans are an uncommonly anxious species. A dog feels shame but can't wonder about whether they have a fatal character flaw. In contrast, humans can, and therefore our conversations are always two conversations in one.

"What's likely?"
"Do you like me?"

We are therefore hunters and gatherers of affirmation and reassurance. Our natural tendency is to gravitate toward any source of affirmation, and when we can't get it from others, we self-affirm often by claiming to represent whatever characteristics are locally popular.

This quest for affirmation is a major driver of human behavior. We collect virtue-brandings for lip-service self-affirmation and self-ornamentation. Some people collect shoes and clothes for status affirmation. More people collect virtue-signals for status and affirmation, never noticing how their virtue signals clash.

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More-ons often collect clashing virtue signals and just pull out whichever one helps them in a particular situation. One minute, they're saying "Hey, I'm just being honest. Isn't honesty always the best policy?" The next minute they're saying "You insulted me. Don't you know, you should never insult anyone?"

Being a more-on is therefore a recipe for absolute narcissism, hypocrisy, and lying. More-ons only pretend they can never have too much of whatever good thing they need in the moment. Though they claim you should always veer one way on life’s winding roads, they don’t. They veer every which way, like we all do. They just like grandstanding about having found the one thing that we can never have in excess because more is always better. Nothing else matters to them, so of course, their narcissism, lying, and hypocrisy go unchecked.

They don’t really care about the thing they demand more and more of. They just care about their elevated status for having found the one thing that matters. They’re the salt king, and they’ll die a proud death on their salty cross, not because they were that into salt but because they were into being kings, which is why they come across as morons.

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