Extremist Imperfections

Antisthenes was a follower of Socrates. After his mentor’s death he founded the philosophical movement later called Cynicism. According to Antisthenes, a virtuous life was one of self-sufficient simplicity. Human suffering resulted from a perverse striving for wealth, fame, power and other forms of social status. Authentic freedom and fulfillment required rejecting social convention so as to live in a more natural, spiritual, and austere state. Some have argued that in his day, Jesus might have been understood as a Jewish Cynic.

It did not take long, however, for Cynicism to devolve into crass vulgarity. Diogenes of Sinope took Cynicism to what he considered its logical, obvious end – that of a man rejecting all forms of social ‘control’ on individual behavior. He lived on the street in a barrel, unclothed, unbathed, and uninhibited by any manner of discretional self-control. He publically relieved his physical and sexual urges as readily as they arose, casually dismissing any criticism of his behavior as nothing more than illegitimate social impositions. Diogenes was an extremist.

Unfortunately, there is plenty of evidence that extremism is part of human nature. We will take any idea and push it to the limit. This isn’t always bad. Mother Teresa could be understood as an extremist. She took the idea of compassion to its logical end. However, when extremism is mixed with tribalism, danger lurks. Tribalism is also quite natural to humans. We are intensely social animals with an inherent need to belong to some form of human community. It is within that community that we find support, meaning, and essential emotional and material resources. But communities are not free. They impose costs – and it was these costs at which the Cynics took aim.

The old saying, “you get what you pay for” applies to the various communities, groups, and tribes to which we belong. As groups offer more benefits – both psychological and material – they tend to cost more in terms of personal time, energy, effort, and resources. Merely being a member of the club might be enough to qualify you for its life insurance policy, but ten years of membership or serving as an officer or paying higher annual dues might be necessary to get access to scholarships or retirement benefits. To get more, you have to give more.

From the group’s point of view, higher costs are an effective way of vetting group members. Commitment and costs tend to rise together. Fraternities learned that lesson long ago. That’s the origin of ‘hazing.’ If all the frat demands are a signature and two bucks, then is it really worth joining? But if we all go through hell together to get into the frat, then we know it must be something special. Those with whom I have suffered are my brothers. We can count on each other. We are true believers.

Ah, there’s the rub. What is it that we all believe in? Increasingly, what research is telling us about dangerous extremists is that what they believe in is not so much ideological but sociological. They believe in their fellow group members and have a desperate desire not to let them down. If they think that ‘not letting them down’ means engaging in violence against perceived threats to the group, then that is what they do. This is extremism, not perfection.

Socrates understood that and could have pointed it out to Diogenes had he been around. To decide what was worthy of belief, Socrates argued that you had to actively entertained contrarian viewpoints. You can’t causally dismiss critical arguments, you had to engage them and learn from them. This is how we prevent social conventions from imposing immoral restrictions on individual behavior. This is how virtuous moderation can succeed over dangerous extremism. But it’s not easy. The ancient Greeks had to think their way to temperance and constructive self-control. Left to its own devices, human nature doesn’t go there. It slides to extremes.