The Era of Extremes

by Hoa Newens

​In 1973, as part of a college course, I read a book titled “The Waste Makers”, by Vance Packard, in which he exposed the way businesses manipulate the needs of consumers to induce excessive consumption, and he predicted the increasing commercialization of American life. The consumer culture has since roared with its excesses wreaking havoc on the environment as well as the human psyche. The bigger the better, more is good, growth is a must.
 
The advent of consumerism was a few decades ago. Now, a new scarier trend has emerged as an offshoot of the habit of “excess”: the one of “extreme”. We are seeing not just increasing violence in movies but that of a gorier and more realistic nature. Use of recreational drugs is not only skyrocketing, the drugs are getting more potent and causing more fatalities. In 1971, the Center for Diseases Control reported 1 death from drug overdose per 100,000 people in the US. In 2014, just over four decades later, that statistic rose to 14.7 deaths per 100,000.
 
The “extreme” trend is showing in mundane facets of our culture. Our vernacular is suffused with extreme terms. “Absolutely” is replacing the simple “yes”; “good” is no longer good enough, “perfect” is; “the best” is not really the best until it is “the best without a doubt”; is “extra special” more special than special?
 
We adore extremes. The best-selling copyrighted book of all time is the Guinness World Records that records annual extremes in human achievements and natural phenomena. Even our healthiest pursuits such as sports are tainted with extreme. Here is a recent headline on the British-based newspaper The Guardian:
 
Why are deadly extreme sports more popular than ever?
Five people died in the French Alps last weekend in sporting incidents from paragliding to wingsuit flying. What pushes people to test the ultimate limits of their own safety?
. . .
It is hard to find exact figures on the popularity of extreme sports, but it is even harder to find anyone who thinks that they aren’t booming. In 2006, the British Parachute Association recorded 39,100 first jumps. Last year there were 59,679. Numbers of “full members” – regular skydivers – have been rising at a similar rate.
. . .
According to a report from the US entertainment company Delaware North, 100 hours of GoPro video are uploaded on to YouTube every minute, and sales of action cameras are growing at 50% a year. “By 2020, extreme sports will challenge professional and collegiate team sports for the title of most-watched category of sports content,” the report says.
. . .
A decade ago, plain base jumping was the new frontier. Today base jumping is tame without a wingsuit, and wingsuits are tame unless you use them to get close to things, at times so close – like Emanuele flying through a 2.6m hole in the rock – that it is obviously dangerous. But the danger made him famous.
 
When I was growing up in the 1960’s, news were helpful bits of information that were shared at appropriate times in the media. Nowadays, there are 24-hour news that are designed to hit your attention rather than help you. Only sensational (read: extreme) news are worthy news; when was the last time you read or watched the news media report anything on the average life of the average American? Instead, this information is buried in boring research archives of government or academia.
 
In modern society, our modes of judgment and value assignment are designed to reward exclusive traits and behaviors: the fastest; the brightest; the cutest; the strongest; etc. everything else does not measure up. Folks who operate at the frontiers of science or any human endeavors usually get more attention than those whose activities are part of mainstream. Pioneers and inventors are honored, and their inventions or ideas bear their namesakes. Those who come after and work hard to develop practical applications get scant mention in the human annals.
 
This way of thinking encourages extreme behavior. It chooses the uniqueness of the abnormal over the commonality of the normal.
 
In our society, average is not good enough, moderate is boring, balanced or centered is not worthy of mention. Along the spectrum of human activities, the general mindset is oriented toward the extremes. This orientation results in three large-scale observable social phenomena.
 
One is that we, as individual human beings are growing further apart from each other. As more people move toward extreme right, the same or more move toward extreme left. As the number of billionaires increases, so does the number of homeless people. Our society is becoming more polarized, and the gaps between factions are getting wider.
 
Two, the above-mentioned polarization creates intense division within the population and conflict within the individual mind, resulting in a faster pace of changes and threats to mental stability. Society is becoming more fragmented and less homogeneous We note with alarm that 1 in 25 U.S. adults has a serious mental illness that limits or interferes with major life activities, and that 18% of U.S. adults – some 40 million people - have anxiety disorders, the most prevalent mental disorder.
 
Three, we are fast getting away from the calming effect of a strong center as our lives are becoming more vulnerable to destabilizing factors arising from the above two observed phenomena and the resulting effects on our living environment.  Global warming and other climate changes are some of those effects.
​
It may appear that the Gods are not watching, and humans are on a path of self-annihilation. One may feel that the current state of the world is deplorable and depressing. Not so fast. Do we really think that tiny humans can truly make a mark in the multi-universe (zillions of worlds) ruled by the Gods? The Gods have designed a built-in control that preserves balance in our universe. Such balancing mechanism reinforces the center of the universe by providing that an extreme state is only a transition to the opposite state. This wonderful balancing system is illustrated by the Yin Yang symbol, also known as Tai Chi symbol.

 
Tai Chi (太极)literally means poles (Chi) of extremes (Tai). Note that, although it is referring to polar extremes, the symbol is not linear, but circular. It illustrates that even though two elements may be heading toward opposite directions; they eventually meet again. This posits that there is a center that exerts a pull on these elements and forces them to revolve around it.
 
In the current social climate of extremes, methods and arts that revolve around the center, that help humans remain anchored to the center, may be losing appeal since they promote the antithesis to the extreme trends. However, the law of Tai Chi ensures that as things move toward one extreme, the seed for reversal germinates and prepares for the next compensatory phase. Refer to the white dot in the midst of the thick black in the symbol. The further away you get from the center the stronger the force that pulls you back, thus creating a turn. You can get as black as you can be, but the center will drop a white dot on you and the only way to go on is to allow the white dot to grow and develop. 
 
The arts of Aikido, meditation and Tai Chi are examples of such centering arts that are currently operating mostly below the radar of the average American, whose attention is captivated most of the times by extremes. Mixed martial artists fighting in a rink is definitely a more popular spectacle than aikidoists training on the mat.
 
During this cyclical period of downtime, it is critical that teachers and students of these centering arts not lose faith in the value of their arts to humankind, and continue to polish their skills and preserve the teachings so that they may participate meaningfully in the upcoming return-to-the-center phase.
 
The statistics may report a relative decline of these arts, but not for lack of need. The need presently exists and is stronger than ever, but it is not being recognized when most of the population is enamored with the fast and furious. Using the opposite to neutralize an extreme is a common fallacy. Only centering can neutralize extremes. Aikido, Tai Chi and meditative arts offer this centering training, and yes, I believe that they can help solve the current mental health crisis – when the opportunity arises.
 
June 28, 2019