Extremism takes root where apathy thrives

You’d think Londoners should be inured to terror. They lived through the Second World War blitz. Through IRA bombings in the 1990s. Through co-ordinated attacks on subways and buses in 2005. And during the Brexit campaign, the murder of MP Jo Cox.

But it took three attacks in three months — on parliament at Westminster in March, at the Manchester concert in May, and now on London Bridge in June — to provoke Prime Minister Theresa May into declaring that there was “far too much tolerance of extremism” in the United Kingdom.

The mass media immediately construed her words as a slap at Islamic extremism. The Independent trumpeted that all recent attacks were “bound together by the single evil ideology of Islamic extremism.”

Indeed, ISIS did claim credit for the last three attacks. But Jo Cox was murdered by a known right-wing white supremacist. And IRA attacks in the 1990s had nothing to do with Islam. Or, for that matter, with Catholicism.

Elsewhere in her comments, May did identify radical Islamists. But her reference to “too much tolerance” was more general.

How her remarks affected Thursday’s election, I cannot guess. But her comment gives me an opportunity to beat one of my favourite drums.

Because there is no such thing as a single extreme. Like Newton’s laws of motion, for every extreme there exists an equal and opposite extreme. And both should be avoided.

I first became aware of this “law of extremes” one day when I picked up a box of iodized salt in a grocery store. I seem to recall that all salt used to be iodized. It contained trace amounts of iodine to prevent humans from developing goiters.

I also recall that we once dabbed iodine liberally on cuts and scrapes. We don’t anymore. Iodine is considered too toxic to be applied indiscriminately.

A paradox. How can something too toxic for general use be so necessary that everyone needs it?

The answer is that both extremes are harmful. Too much kills; too little imperils. But somewhere in between is the “just right” dosage.

When I looked around the world, I found the same “just right” formula almost everywhere.

Too little water, we die of dehydration; too much, we drown.

Too much fire, we burn — ourselves, our forests, our cities. Too little, we freeze (especially in Canada).

Too little sunshine leads to Vitamin D deficiency: rickets, weak bones, skeletal deformity. Too much causes melanoma.

Somewhere between the extremes of too much and too little lies the “just right” amount. I think of it as the “Goldilocks” solution — the moderate middle between two extremes. (Donald Trump baffles us because he has no moderate middle; he consists entirely of extremes.)

We tend to assume that if one extreme is wrong, we should espouse its opposite. If this is bad, that must be good.

Nope. Not so.

We no longer tolerate strapping students in schools. Or parents beating their children. Even if physical force was intended to teach discipline. That is now seen as abuse. Instead, we’ve gone to the opposite extreme. Teachers dare not hug a child, even if that child desperately needs some physical closeness.

Child abuse — whether emotional, physical, or sexual — is clearly wrong. But its opposite, child neglect, is equally wrong.

The right amount of physical contact is a constantly moving target. An infant should nuzzle at a mother’s nipple; a teenager shouldn’t.

Indeed, I’ve argued that you only find the “just right” level when you realize you’ve crossed an invisible line. Either too much, or too little. You have to be willing to back off. Without lurching to the opposite extreme.

So what’s the opposite of the extremism for which May claims we have “too much tolerance?” I suggest it’s apathy. Deliberate ignorance. Closing one’s eyes; turning one’s back. What can one person do? I’m all right, Jack; screw you.

As Edmund Burke said, long ago, “The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good people to do nothing.”

Britons let government decimate their police forces. Slash their social services. Let corporations manipulate national policies for short-term benefits. Now they’re paying the price for personal isolation.

I’m sure May did not have that kind of extremism in mind when she said, “The whole of our country needs to come together to take on this extremism. We need to live our lives not as a series of segregated, separated communities, but as one truly United Kingdom.” But she was right. Jim Taylor is an Okanagan Centre author and freelance journalist.