PEOPLE with tendencies to hold “extreme” views are often associated with violence mainly on acts of terrorism, and worse, linked with religious fanaticism. But beyond this definition might quite have a realistic demography: it can be more common among us.
To meet the qualifications of an extremist, one must possess these three basic catalysts: (1) to claim to have superior critical thinking compared to others; (2) the world is in “black and white” and it is absolute; and (3) ignorance. These are mere catalysts - since it is subjective for individual based on the environments they are situated.
The first one was a giveaway, they would believe with all conviction that what they have claimed to know is a “eureka” and must be treated with highest credence because the rest were not thinking correctly based on acts that can be considered as “stupid judgment.”
Because you have made a poor decision, you are bound to be doomed – or so based on the preferential standards. And no, you can’t go back now not even joining to their “superior” team. You’ve done it, ergo, you must be chastised. There can only be right and wrong, no in-betweens. Sometimes, I’d like to believe the quote stating about “being neutral means siding with oppression or oppressors,” a little bit an extremist point of view.
Despite all of their precious “enlightenment,” the irony can be that they must have been very ignorant on a massive scale of things. Their limited depth of perception has made them the extremist they are now.
And this may not necessarily be on matters of religious ideologies but also in “academic” and “political” discourses as well – that sometimes very toxic than ISIS. Some extremists become manipulative, albeit actually having a good point. But unlike ISIS, they remain harmless, at least they did not think of sowing terror among the lives they considered as inferior to them.
The psychologist and psychoanalyst Arno Gruen mentioned in the book, “Addressing Extremism” written by Doctors Peter Colemen and Andrea Bartoli, that extremism can be viewed as a “plague” and that it can be the result of self-destruction, self-hatred leading to “feelings of revenge toward life itself, and a compulsion to kill one's own humanness.”
But the most “amusing,” if not disturbingly fascinating, is that at some point we may have become an extremist (and maybe up to now) and yet we never acknowledged it, or worse, we never know we already are.
We are seeing a new political climate and a social landscape in the early years of the 21st century. This is not only happening in the Philippines but around the world (and some countries have undergone these changes ahead of us).
Again, extremism may not only be evident on spiritual convictions; sometimes it is ever present on people who may have the lack of it.
(nefluczon@gmail.com)