Everyone is extreme these days. People are extremely
liberal, extremely conservative, and extremely not extreme. And people blame
the other side for their extremism. In
fact, extremism is treated like a virus; it is a disease one can catch. Just yesterday, a suspected impending
terrorist was shot and people asked, ‘when was he radicalized’? A.k.A. when did
he catch the extreme disease and who inflicted it?
The truth is quite the opposite. Extremism is a natural human temperament. People are looking to be one dimensional,
uncomplex- extreme! In chapter 4 of Maimonides’,
‘Eight chapters’, he delineates how to ‘cure’ the character of a person, which
is naturally extreme. He states that all
good traits lie in the middle of two extremes, one extreme that goes too far
and one extreme that doesn’t go far enough.
For example, a person should strive for temperance- don’t be too
indulgent or too ascetic. Or a person should be generous without being too
stingy or too extravagant. It is finding
that equilibrium that is challenging or being able to apply different angles at
the right time. But to be extreme is the
natural state of a human being and one doesn’t catch it, one merely finds a
place where he can express it. However, there is an exception to the rule of
extremes. There is one attribute that does require an extreme.
It says in verse 12:3 that Moses was not just humble,
but ‘extremely humble’.[1] Humility breaks the rule of the middle, it is
a character trait that is meant to be extreme.
And, not surprisingly, it is the one area of life that it is hard
to be extreme while in all other cases, extreme is the rule not the
exception. So what does it mean to be
humble in an extreme way? There are two
parts. Part one is that a person realizes that all he has and achieves is a
gift and not the result of some inherent greatness. Therefore, the more he can view his life has
as a series of gifts, the more humble he will be. And second, it means that a person view his self
as simple, and therefore, he can relate to everything and everyone. As opposed to an arrogant self where a person
sees himself in a certain light, particularly an exalted light, which then
defines his interactions in how he relates to the world, and very often, limits
them. The goal of life is to be balanced
and nuanced when it comes to ideas, but when it comes to the self, there is no
end to how humble we can become.
.
[1]
Maimonides says humility also follows the rule of balance in the ‘8 chapters’ but R’ Bachya says that humility is an
exception to the rule. And it seems that an aspect of humility, even Maimonides
agrees in chapter 4 of pirkei avos in mishna 4 that it breaks the rule.
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