Thousands of years ago, the Greeks determined that παν μέτρον άριστον, or alternatively, that virtue is a golden mean. Despite the fact that Western culture has at least superficially internalized the idea — the average Joe on the street likely reflexively concurs with squiggly formula — there are still cases in which we would profit from remembering it. As it turns out, it's sometimes non-trivially difficult to know the directionality of our immoderacy.
Some claim that there are exceptions to this principle; many of these people appear to be guided by ideology. Cynically, we might guess that this is because locating the Good (whatever that means) at the extremes makes developing zeal relatively... (read 1179 more words →)