About Me

Rebel without a cause!

Wednesday, June 07, 2006

Fanaticism of Moderation

Holding moderate view is nowadays considered to be a mark of an educated,civilized man. In the age of libertanism, a moderate is most civilized. For, to hold too strong an opinion on any subject, is considered to be foolish.

It is a mindset which comes after making mistakes. After having held strong opinions on certain subjects and then finding out your mistakes and then having had the courage to accept it and modify your thoughts. It comes when you see that, the truth mostly lies in between. And it is a mindset which is very hard to fault. Even I have a very similar mindset.

But sometimes I do find that there can be something wrong even here. I know this risks sounding going round in circles. But the principle fault still remains which must be remembered.

Firstly, this mindset breeds caution which is good but it also hampers risk taking, thinking of brave new ideas, of taking leaps of faith which sometimes have created or discovered new thoughts.

Another danger, is the condescending attitude that it breeds towards those holding extreme views and not following the middle path. I believe that was a strong fault in Indian thinking for a long time. The view from either extreme is always taken with an intellectually superior attitude. Many time the extremists are just reacting to some faults in the majority opinion but that might be difficult to discern in the rhetoric of extremism. I believe the same has happened in case of the reaction of the mainstream media towards Arundhati Roy. Her message has been missed in the circus. And she holds part of the blame too! Moderatism here again ;-)

Here is what the lady says about her future plans.

4 comments:

Rose said...

I disagree with the mindset.. I think if a person has a viewpoint he/she SHUD strongly feel abt it. I do not have a notion in any of my cells that i casually belv in jst for the heck of it.. I hv put my thought and emotion into it.. Of crs it shud be backed by rationale.. Of crs beliefs r subjective and a person shud nt be judged for it as he/she has a right to his/her opinions.. Of crs it may change with time n circumstances.. Of crs it shud be arrived at after evaluated the grey ares, coz nt evrythn in life is in black and white..

I think ppl who tend to take a 'moderate view' on things either ds not think for themselves or are afraid to speak out the truth.. Taking the 'politically correct' viewpnt may nt always be the right one..

Btw.. i dnt think Arundhati Roy's message has been missed by the circus at all.. And she holds part of the blame of wat??? The criticism of mainstream media and politicians were bcoz she raised her voice and dared to utter issues concerning the masses.. She dared to raise a finger at the powerful...

..Me (with all my very strong beliefs)

milieu said...

First of all let me clarify, there are some things where you cant take a moderate position. stuffs like child labor or poverty etc.
But I have found that there are so many things, where you cant go all out onto one side because the other side also has some arguments which are right.

I dont agree that the politicos criticized roy only because she dared to raise her voice. She certainly wants you to think that way and ofcourse there are some politicos who might be against her for that.

In this case, it is a question of sufferings of few(a sizable few) to the percieved benefits to the majority. Its easy to paint the politicos as the villains and they might also have vested interest in building the dam(corruption etc) but the fact is that there is a large majority which believes that the dam will benefit them in terms of assured irrigation etc.

Ofcourse, the people who have to be resettled havent been asked and they probably are not being adequately compensated. But wont it be better that Ms Roy campaigns that the people get their compensation rather than to not build the dam at all?

Rose said...

I gues we jst belong to diff schools of thought..

Let me jst leave it at that.. Coz this blog space will nt be sufficient for our arguments..

:)

..Me

milieu said...

I leave that matter to you. I am always ready for an argument ;-)