Extremist Ideas Are Not a Good Thing
These are just some ruminations of my own on the sad state of affairs around the world. World-wide we have war, terrorist attacks, genocide or attempted genocide, civil wars, and general conflict in some form or another. There are times when the entire world seems bent on destruction.
What is at the root of all of this hate and discontent? What is it that causes an otherwise intelligent and graceful species capable of creating beautiful art, literature, science, and poetry to turn on itself in such a destructive and irrational manner? The answer can be found on a small scale right here at Joe User just by reading some of the artcles and ensuing discussion, particularly in the Political threads.
It doesn't take long to discover that many people hold to very extreme schools of thought and philosophy and are extremely agressive and irrational at times in defending or propogating their ideals. At times apparent open hatred can errupt between opposing extremes of thought with neither side acknowledging the other's thoughts or willing to concede on even the most reasonable and rational suggestions of a midle ground.
Sadly, many world leaders and people in power often also subscribe to these same extreme ways of thinking. But intead of fighting each other with words on a thread they utilize guns, bombs, and people's lives to propogate their extremes of thought. The cost of such extremist thought is high in natural resources, environmental damage, and most importantly human lives.
Entire groups of people are often targeted for destruction due to real or imagined political differences, religious differences, race, or other factors. This destruction may take the form of enforced extreme poverty, starvation, terrorist attacks, or open warfare. Examples of all of these are readily available world-wide and not restricted to any particular flavor of extremist ideals , race, nation, or political agenda.
The only thing all of these extremists have in common are that they are unreasonably extreme in their thought and philosophy, irrational in the defense and propogation of their ideas, totally dedicated to the idea that they are right and justified, are incapable of seeing or considering any middle ground, and they are human beings.
While human beings are the most intelligent creatures on our little planet, possessed of the ability for abstract thought and amazing creativity, we are also by far the single most agressive and destructive creature on our little planet. So much so that we turn on our own species in an attempt to destroy any members of our species that may be somewhat different in ideals or beliefs.
I find it interesting that the very thing that makes us the dominant species on the planet, our intellect, is also the thing that makes us the most danergous not only to other species and the planet itself, but to ourselves. Perhaps, in the end, we really aren't as intelligent as we would like to believe.