A critique to moderation

In the current days, we are bombarded with opinions coming from a vast ideological spectrum, some backed up by tradition, others by morality and even some from empirical or rational constructions. What to believe in? How should society be organized? - These are questions that have hunted our thought for millennia. How to answer them properly according to our zeitgeist? With moderation.

From the great professor that History is, we have learned in school that such "extremist" regimes like authoritarian communism and fascism (hardcore collectivist systems in general) lead to social distopias and torment our liberty. That said, and we rapidly form an antithesis from this reality in our minds, as a response to the pursuit of the best society possible, given the resources.

Curiously, (or not) 60 years into postmodernity, and all the western world is submerged in a form of softcore collectivism. The slight variations among western nations include democratic socialism or the more conservative christian democracy. You won't find a third one. Human rights (the ones declared by the UN at the beginning of postmodernity) are the imperative values of all western political, social and economic thought. Yet, the wide majority of people I come across, answer me to the political/social/economic ideological question with the lovely label of Moderation. But what is moderation?

Moderation may be formally defined as non-extremist or non-excessive action, being within reasonable limits... Yet I categorically disagree with this definition. Why? Because I advocate that even moderation is extremism in itself. I'm not looking forward to get an argument on semantics but rather on reason.

So, to begin the defence of my thesis, I start by questioning the inevitable: What is extremism? Here the definitions fall short, and are clearly redundant. To define extremism, you must define extremes, and to define extremes you must draw limits to the spectrum and obviously create a centered interval where moderation fits. But is our thought limited or infinite? Can we draw such lines? I think not. 

Everytime we look back in time and study history we only see the limits of our thought expanding in an objective perspective. So moderation must be what the democratic majority believes, like a statistical mean associated with an interval defined by a constant multiplying by the standard deviation. But what value does that constant hold? Ceasing the questioning for a bit, I want to claim it very clearly why moderation is also extremism. Because to believe or hold any ideological perspective is ultimately to embrace that methodology to a practical end. And who doesn't have an ideology? Even believing in nothing is an ideology in itself, even being subjectivist or an ethical utilitarian implies holding that view as an ideology.

To conclude, I deeply believe there is no such human being without ideology. Even if moderation may be considered the present status-quo, it is a clear falacy. It may serve as a convention, a starting point, but never as a logical argument to the ideological discussion. Those who label "extremists" as impractical, illogical and invalid for arguing are the utopian narrow-minded people they so bravely fight against - an enemy in themselves.

Best wishes,

Tiago Águia de Moura