I know how low I can sink, and how tempting it is to go there. None is more susceptible to corruption and receptiveness to radical hostility towards his fellow man than the frustrated idealist--like me--, torqued off because the masses are not following into line with his conception for how they ought to be living.
This is not original thinking on my part. Hoffer and others have long pointed out that without endless patience with people's lapses, mouthy arrogance, driven by their misguided pride in clinging to group values and group preconceptions, impatience and frustration will pervert the good-hearted idealist into a power-lusting, thorough-going hater of other humans. From that point on, the discontented true believer will find his extreme cause to hold onto. He will use every vicious tactic conceivable to deprive others of their liberty and free will. His sole purpose is to force them, on pain of death and torture, to join the unholy cause to which he has pledged his unswerving allegiance. Totalitarian unity is the only acceptable future outcome.
He has fallen as low as he can go. He now is a devil-worshipper and an effective soldier in the army of Satan and Lera out to enslave and harm all human kind. This is what ISIS promises us. I know what they are because I have a fierce, fanatical heart. It would not be too much of a stretch for me to take a knife and cut off the head of an infidel while the cameras are recording it all, all to promote the holy cause, and cower the rest of resisting humanity.
We are all capable of horrifying acts of cruelty, most easily engaged in as a true believer within a powerful, on-the-march movement.
As Mavellonialized individuators, we are capable of loving, impressive acts of love, heroism and ingenious feats of intellectual prowess.
We, as idealists, must be patient with our stodgy, resistant, unfriendly, defiant fellow members of the public.
We must be patient and let them come to accept, if ever, a superior set of values, and a modern improvement on how to live spiritually and morally. We have the right to proselytize, but that is where our power ends. It is legitimate to remind the resisters that they will be punished for their sins of resisting by God in this world and the next, and rewarded if they conform to God's wishes. But that is between them and God, for idealistic prophets have no, I repeat no moral right, to interfere with the choices made by others.
The idealist must also not have expectations of others that are unreasonably high. Sluggish, indifferent members of the public cannot and will not move far enough, fast enough to please the idealist. Then and there is the danger spot for the idealist. He must not and cannot interfere or stifle their liberty, their expression of their individual free choice.
By lowering expectations, and remaining calm and patient, the idealist achieves two thing. First, he saves his own soul from God's punishment by not usurping God's authority and power to work with others as they choose to live well or poorly.
Second, he does not become a duped captain in the army of the dark powers, spreading a sick, debilitating, centralized ideology over millions of defeated, compliant humans.
What I have finally come to understand arose slowly for me out of my limited understanding of how the principle of moderation unfolds. I now apprehend one of its most significant applications.
No matter how noble the goal for humanity to come to absorb, it must be reached or rejected or modified by the population as free individuals, choosing what they absorb, reject or hybridize.
The principle of moderation states that a noble means is the only way to reach a noble end. In other words, the mean is the actual end that the reformer is working towards, in every case. He usually is unaware of what cause he is actually serving.
The fanatic, the true believer, the corrupted idealist resorts to a cruel means to achieve his end: based in violence, terror, completely centralized power, and complete smashing of the souls of the noncompliant, converting them into uniform, conformist zombies.
The bad means is the end that the fanatic seeks. That bad end always, once unwrapped, is a differently packaged scheme to promotes and extends the groupist, institutionalized, statist reign of Satan and Lera.
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