My mind ranges far and wide on my solitary walks. Today I want to bring you into a recent internal conversation that focused on clarifying the notion of extremism. One can become an extremist in any area of thought: theology, morality, metaphysics, politics, and many others. What is extremism? How do “extreme” positions become plausible to those who come to hold them? How do you know if you are an extremist? Is there any objective way to determine what positions are extreme? Or, are extremes “in the eye of the beholder”? Is the label “extremist” simply one more rhetorical weapon in a struggle for cultural control?

The Nature of Extremism

I have seen people move gradually from what seemed to me moderate theological, moral, theological, and political positions to extreme ones. During this process their entire system of beliefs and even their personalities change. How does this happen? Many factors come into play. Changes in psychological, physical, and political conditions can facilitate changes in beliefs. But I am not going to address these factors. I want to focus on logic.

I focus on logic because whatever other factors influence our beliefs, we always assert our beliefs as true. And once the mind latches on to a belief as true, two mental processes get triggered. First, the mind begins automatically to unfold the implications of that belief. This process is driven by the logical law that says that the valid implications of a true proposition are themselves true. Second, the mind becomes very sensitive to propositions that directly or by implication contradict that belief. We cannot believe that two contradictory assertions can both be true at the same time.

The Path to Extremism

Once we embrace a belief as true for whatever reason, rational or irrational, our minds begin the process of extending its reach and defending it against rival beliefs in the neighborhood. If it weren’t for challenges from other people, our minds might be content to adjust a few of our other beliefs in the immediate vicinity. Clearing a little space around our beloved belief might reinforce it enough to put our minds at rest. But when we are confronted with competing beliefs, we must make a choice. We can modify our treasured belief to take into account the force of its competitors or we can double down and deny any truth to the alternatives. The second option is the path to extremism! Happily, most people don’t follow this path all the way to the extreme. I won’t say they are lazy. Perhaps they are simply pragmatic enough not to be bothered by their inconsistency and arbitrariness.

The Truth, the Whole Truth, and Nothing but the Truth

The first mistake extremists make is assuming that any belief/proposition can embody “the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth.” Extremists will not allow any other truth claim to modify their axiomatic belief because any change in that belief would imply that it was not originally “the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth.” A dispiriting prospect of endless modification and compromise would loom before them. Extremists treat beliefs as if they are either wholly true or wholly false. And if it’s discovered to be partially false it must be in fact wholly false. The logical law of the excluded middle would seem to support them, that is, for any proposition P, P is either true or false. There is no middle ground between true and false. When dealing in abstract symbols such as P or Q, which are bereft of existential content, no one can doubt the law. But in ordinary human language it does not work. Concrete existence cannot be translated clearly and without loss into language. Words and sentences are always imprecise.

Gravitational Logic

We noted above that the move to extremism can take the straight path of logic of implication—sometimes called “the slippery slope”—or a zig zag path of reacting to contradictions, sometimes called “dialectical logic.” Both of these logics tend toward extremism. But I think there is also another form of logical adjustment by which one may minimize the temptation to extremism. For lack of a better term, I call it gravitational logic.

Consider the way the entire universe consists of one gravitational field in which every point and particle is in communication with every other. The closer objects are to one another the more powerful the attractive force and the further apart, the less. But no matter how far apart, the gravitational interaction between two physical objects never reduces to zero. Likewise, the more massive an object, the more gravitational force it exerts. Any change in one place affects the whole and every point within it to some degree.

Let’s apply the analogy of the universal gravitational force to logic, the science of relationships among propositions. Every assertion about any state of affairs within the universe simultaneously asserts something about the whole universe, even if it mentions only one thing explicitly. This must be true because every particular thing in the universe exists only in relation to every other thing and the whole. To change one’s belief about one state of affairs requires adjustment in every other belief. The closer (logically) one belief is to another or the larger (or more general its scope) the more adjustment will be required.

The moon’s gravity affects the ocean tides on earth twice as much as the Sun because, though much less massive, it is much closer to earth. And the harmony or tension between two moral beliefs will be much more apparent than harmony or tension between a moral belief and belief about the geology of Australia. Moral beliefs share the same neighborhood and speak about things within the same space. And yet, beliefs about morality, history, cosmology, and geology speak about the same universe and condition each other however slightly.

Avoiding Extremism without Falling into Relativism

In my view, this analogy helps us avoid extremism without falling into a morass of relativism and never-ending compromise. First, because in our world everything is related to everything, there can be no statement in human words that embodies the ideal of “the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth.” There is always more to learn and some adjustments to be made. Extremism is thus deprived of its basic premise. However, because beliefs live in regions, neighborhoods and even local streets—such as morality, natural science, metaphysics, history, etc—we can assert with confidence the reliability of our beliefs as long as we take the lay of the adjacent land into account and stumble on no unanswerable objections. Though it is not impossible, we need not worry that a belief about a state of affairs in another galaxy will defeat or severely modify one’s belief about matters nearer to home.

Next Time: Shall we experiment with some beliefs to see how this works?