Moderating Moderation

 

The term ‘everything in moderation, including moderation’ or any slight variant has been passed down throughout the ages, has been attributed to the likes of Socrates, Voltaire, Benjamin Franklin, Oscar Wilde, as well as Mark Twain. It now seems that this saying cannot honestly be passed down to the next generation as now it seems we to have run out of moderation.

Moderation must be looked at as being some sort of un-extreme within the constraints of ‘too much’ or ‘too little’; a middle ground as it were. Of course the two extremes define where the middle is made manifest, though this too can be quite broad depending on where an individual looks; and as such things must shift over time as the societal focus shifts from topic to topic.

A societal talking-point often used is ‘disgust’ as it is a very strong driver, though it is best used in moderation. Disgust is most likely an evolutionary trait that developed out of a sense of safety, an over abundant disregard for cleanliness has led to disease and death, while an over abundant regard for cleanliness has led to the othering of people and death; that was the Holocaust and yes Hitler is reported to have been a germophobe.   

Another societal talking-point often used in the Western world is ‘liberty’ as it is a very strong driver, though it is best used in moderation. John Locke (1632-1704), known as ‘the father of liberalism’ is accredited with saying “every man hath a right to punish the offender, and be executioner of the law of nature.” Then from Fyodor Dostoevsky (1821-1881), we get "A society should be judged not by how it treats its outstanding citizens but by how it treats its criminals." The final quote for this part comes from Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. (1841-1935), who is said to have said ‘The right to swing my fist ends where the other man's nose begins.’

Of the three men named above, Dostoevsky’s words are of the most interest. Locke’s words are simply a justification for the ideal of setting a jury. Oliver Wendell’s words are simply a justification for self restraint. The words provided by Dostoevsky on the other hand are what may best be described as a comparative contemplation.

The Dostoevsky quote requires a party of three parts because it can be broken down into the following: ‘outstanding citizens’, ‘criminals’, and the ‘reader’. In reading the words of Dostoevsky, one has to make the choice of which sort of citizen is granted the moral high-ground. Some people will take the side of the criminal by putting the blame on anyone other than the criminal, thus putting the outstanding citizen at a disadvantage. A criminal will often crime is, by definition, a truism. To those who lean towards denying personal responsibility, the following questions must be asked: a) what message is being sent to the ‘outstanding citizen’ when the ‘criminal’ is no longer treated as an offender, b) what message is being sent to the ‘criminal’ when he learns that his fist no longer has to stop and the nose of the ‘outstanding citizen’ and c) what sort of society will be made?

When moderation becomes overly moderated at the societal level shit happens, a thing which can be seen in real time at the time of this writing. If by chance you are reading this in the future, simply look to the news section of your search engine of choice and enter ‘New York City 2024’ to see what shit looks like. So long as history has not been scrubbed or rewritten then you the reader should see a number of stories of people being pushed in front of subway trains, at least one story of officers of the law being physically attacked, at least one officer of the law being shot dead by a criminal who had been arrested and charged twenty-one times, countless number of car jacking incidents, and stories of many outstanding citizens having a general feeling of distress. At the time of this writing 2024 is just emerging from its first quarter of the calendar year and so this the current year is nowhere near completed.

Of course there are many “experts” with many accreditations, who have written many papers that we, as a society, selectively trust to give explanation to situations. It does not take a highly accredited expert to understand what is going on, people act based on incentives and those incentives are being set, managed and enforced by persons driven by their own incentives. Of course disincentives are also a plausible tool for convincing people how to behave, though without moderation a society risks moving towards tyranny.

Typically, the Government holds ownership on the application of force within the society over which they govern; when the society decides that the government is no longer granted said license, the peasants are revolting, literally. Unfortunately, through law and regulation the Government has licensed-out the application of force to groups in need of ‘protecting’, these so called protected classes came to the realize they were handed a leg up over other members of their society and leveraged their newly licensed power.

One example of this was and still is the bastardization of English grammar through the assertion of personal pronouns. Pronouns are simply: in the first-person (I), in the second-person (you), and in the third persons (he, she, they, and them). The reader can do there own litmus test on this new grammatical paradigm by conjugating any verb, only in the present tense is required and then accept the level of their self confusion as a form of informal polling. Of course like any focus group or social-political poll ever, the extrapolation of the polled as a representative of the gen-pop must be considered and accounted for when honest societal representation becomes front of mind.

For many people the purpose of Government is to provide the citizenry that which they can not provide for themselves with the primary purported focus being on security. This creates a tantalizing conundrum for the political class as they will be tempted to make unrealistic policy promises in the race to ‘purchase’ voters.

 Many a Government will make an appeal to empathy via the phrase ‘we are thinking of the children’ and then said Government will typically add in yet another protective law that extends their control over the population at large, thus adding even more cogs to the bureaucratic machine and yet still those people will be paid.

So now the children will actually be thought of. Margret Thatcher is accredited for the phrase, ‘The problem with socialism is that you eventually run out of other people's money.’ As the bureaucratic machine grows so will the payroll grow, this leaves the Government with only two choices: raise taxes, or print money; regardless of which path a Government takes, the children will suffer today or they will suffer the day after tomorrow. Overly burdensome taxes will impact the nutritional value of the foods eaten by children, especially for those who have no access to arable land as the parents will seek food at lower and lower cost. Money printing on the other hand limits the future of a child today being able to create generational wealth and security as  more money is chasing the same amount of imported goods, inflation, and thus by extension limiting the pursuit of happiness for the children’s children many days after tomorrow.

 Paraphrasing an easily recognizable historic saying, ‘with great liberty comes great responsibility’, and the second portion of this version and the original seems to have been forgotten by those who want both liberty and power. Persons, who want liberty and power without the guardrails of responsibility, self-imposed towards avoiding some sort of enforcement, are usually referred to as tyrants; historically those tyrannical people come to realize that reality kicks in right around the time that they became about seven inches shorter, as Charles I of England found out in 1649.

 Of course there will be those… (Screeching car halt or needle dragged over record sounds, take your pick.) Ending this article was becoming a challenge; until just now.

  

 A conversation ensued in the elevator just now where I was told that my holding a door for a woman could be insulting to the woman could be insulting; oddly enough this was told to me by a woman. In the telling it was stated that I could get in trouble, my retort was ‘insults are hurled and offence is taken’, a cliché I’ve explained in previous articles. The ride in the elevator wasn’t long enough for this woman to take offence and I didn’t care enough to be offended by said person; words like coddling and patriarchy where part of her rhetoric.

 What this woman doesn’t know is that I also hold the door for men, children, and pets. I don’t care who I provide kindness too, with self-proven assholes being the exception. My comment, ‘people should accept kindness when they can as there seems to be a global shortage’ fell on deaf ears. This left me wondering how the conversation would have gone if I changed the gender of the target of my kindness to male. Interestingly, the patriarchy is a problem all the while the matriarchy walks unchallenged. The centre of power can be known by witnessing who is not allowed to be challenged. I was threatened by a woman, leaving me to wonder where my Government is on this.

 Sir Thomas More: ‘This country is planted thick with laws, from coast to coast, Man's laws, not God's! And if you cut them down, and you're just the man to do it, do you really think you could stand upright in the winds that would blow then? Yes, I'd give the Devil benefit of law, for my own safety's sake!’ – "The lady doth protest too much, methinks"