Hello Confucius
Confucius, the Chinese teacher, editor, politician and philosopher, wrote about moderation some 26 centuries ago
I like to think of Confucius as a fellow pragmatist across the space of time, one who recognized long ago that excess (a lack of moderation) can come between us and happiness, wisdom and even health.
The sentence above was in a post I wrote in November 2010. Confucius, the Chinese teacher, editor, politician and philosopher, wrote about moderation some 26 centuries ago. Human nature, human behavior, human wisdom have remained consistently inconsistent for a very long time. Despite centuries of experience, progress and enlightenment there are still many ignorant, angry, unhappy people who resist change and prefer mysticism and superstition to knowledge and critical thinking. And they take extreme positions on issues for no discernable compelling reason.
In my last post I noted that it has never been a better time to be alive as a human, but I also noted just how much is wrong with how we treat others, how we care for our planet, how we perceive reality. Religion and ideology make humans obtuse in a multitude of ways that contradict what human evolution has achieved over the many centuries. The hypocrisy of those who are mindlessly religious is matched by the willful ignorance of those who deny information and facts.
So while it’s the best time ever to be alive, it’s also obvious that humans can still undermine the potential of what could be even better while slowly but surely changing the climate and destroying the diversity of life they share the planet with. Part of this is simply the perversity of human nature, but another aspect is the diminishing moderation of human attitudes and the increasing divisive polarization that undermines rational thought and behavior.
Confucius had it right regarding the value of moderation, but many modern humans simply don’t get it. Some insist that real values only exist when strong, uncompromising stances are taken on issues. Others assert that meaningful achievement requires maximum continuous effort, including collateral consequences. There are those who consider extremism the only way real change — not to be confused with “undesirable” change — can occur. If a little is good, more must be better is not just a phrase but a way of thinking for too many.
Moderation is the rational recognition and acceptance that a civil society, or marriage, or workplace or… is about give and take, compromise, getting along, finding common ground among individuals who are simply not going to have identical or even similar views on everything. Of course, if you’re a regular visitor to this blog, you’re already a reasonable, pragmatic-minded person and thus know all of this to be self-evident. If only everyone could be like us. Except, we all know that reasonable people can disagree. The trick is finding how to work with this.
To be moderate is to be sufficiently open-minded to achieve things while allowing others to feel they too have a stake and can share in making things work, solving problems, fixing issues. The notion that moderates don’t have strong values is misguided. We have values, but they are realistic and vary from issue to issue. Consistency is neither necessary nor desirable. Ideological purity is the antithesis of what moderates consider essential to living an intelligent, rational life. Unlike true believers, moderates are capable of critical thinking.
The anti-intellectual, anti-academic, anti-expert populist mania that has possessed those feeling most left out in the twenty-first century discards many centuries of human progress, replacing it with simple-minded versions of reality. There is nothing genuine, traditional or pure about ignorance other than it separates individuals from reality and rationality. The simplification of complexity doesn’t change the complexity but creates an illusion. The further from the moderate center, the greater the effort to simplify the complicated.
When our ability to function rationally, the apogee of human existence, becomes devalued, we are doomed. Intelligence, education and reasoning are all we have as humans that make hope actually functional. When superstition and mysticism were replaced by enlightenment and intellectual curiosity, humans began to realize their potential. Those who prefer extremism and anti-intellectual simplicity are doomed. We can avoid their fate by remaining focused on being moderate, sensible, rational. Confucius would be pleased.

