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Good Men Project Columnist Taylor García Returns For A Limited Series Examining Our Current Sociopolitical Quagmire
At our breakfast and dinner table, my sons and I have been talking about a key concept that I’ve been broaching since they were small. Now, it’s finally starting to sink in. That concept is moderation.
“What do you think moderation means?” I asked them the other day. They had a general idea that it meant watching or having somebody watch what you’re using or doing.
“That’s part of it,” I said. “It’s not so much what you’re doing as it is how much you do it, the amount you do something.”
I then introduced the idea that everything is allowed in moderation. I made several examples, starting with video games. Parenthetically, my younger son is borderline addicted to his screen. My older son to a lesser extent, but certainly, he spends a lot of time on it.
“You can definitely play video games and have screen time,” I said, “but you can’t have it all day, every day. Right?”
They nodded in feigned agreement.
I went on.
Food of any kind, alcohol, smoking…everything, essentially, could be permitted in moderation.
“Now, that doesn’t mean I’m condoning smoking,” I clarified. “The key difference is that if someone wants to smoke, one cigarette might not hurt them. But if they smoke multiple times a day every single day for their whole life, then that’s a different story.
“Or, what if, for example, you have a glass of wine with dinner, once a week? How does that compare to having multiple glasses of wine every day of your life?”
I was drawing the comparison, so they knew that things like video games, which in their minds is not something that looks or sounds dangerous, but yet can certainly be dangerous, if you add up all the time spent on it.
It only adds up, if you add it up, I often quip, in homage to one of my favorite comedians, Gary Gulman, who talks about how his older brother chided him for spending money on frivolous things.
“It adds up, kid,” Gary’s brother told him.
“It only adds up, if you add it up,” Gary retorted.
The adding up, of course, being the perfect metaphor to describe the excess that leads to unmoderated behavior, consumption, you name it.
This shifted the conversation away from the moderation of foods, activities, even vices, and toward the moderation of discussions, mindsets, beliefs, religion, and politics.
“Anything—anything at all—can be overdone. You can do or consume too much of anything, and that’s when you fall into the danger zone.” I continued. “Again, everything in moderation.”
They’re at the age now (11 and 13-years-old) when real choices are coming at them almost every moment of the day, and I see them making better ones, at least when I’m with them. Who knows what they’re choosing, or rather, what they’re not moderating when I’m not looking. I now see them making better choices about how they budget their time and how much food they need or what they want to spend their money on.
I’ve even seen it in their emotions and moods, and, wow can tween/teenage boys be moody! I remind them constantly of keeping their “mood temperature” just right—not too hot, and not too cold. Early in my career here at the Good Men Project, I wrote a column about this very subject called “Remember the Atmosphere.” Click here to see Section 5, which talks about the moderation of our emotions.
What I’m talking about here overall is the middle way. One of the hallmarks of Buddhism is the middle way, as in being not too much of this, not too much of that, just right down the center. Just down the middle. The middle way is what helps people get through challenges in life in that by choosing not to react in the extreme—neither negative nor positive—we can achieve a better state of being.
The middle way allows us to think about how to handle things in a clearer, more sustainable way when our temperature, or rather our temperament, is turned to the middle setting. And this isn’t necessarily neutrality, which is neither good nor bad and often associated with numbness. A middle, or moderate path, is recognizing that both of the negative and positive exist, both can be felt and understood, yet it’s the middle location—the line between the yin and yang, where balance is achieved.
Let’s zoom out further and apply this idea of moderation to our current political state.
Moderation in American politics, unfortunately, is essentially gone. It is now mostly an artifact. Maybe one day it can be revived. Let’s hope.
Nearly every aspect of our current political climate is extreme. Whether it’s the political parties themselves, the politicians, the ideologies, the media that provide their platforms, all of it is now too far in either direction on the spectrum. As citizens and consumers, it’s really now just a matter of two colors, red and blue.
Now and then, we’ll hear about a moderate politician, one who is within an established political party but who does not traffic in the extreme views of said party. This feels like some ray of hope, but often their actions and how they vote in congress is more for attention, and they end up looking like show ponies who actually don’t get much done. The same goes for the rare journalist who applies some moderation in how they examine and comment on an issue, but those essentially don’t exist. They’re all pundits at this point.
What the rare moderate lawmaker might, and this is a big might, deserve is a small participation award for at least trying. By taking even the smallest stand apart from their own affiliation, for the minor attempt to step away from the party line, they deserve some credit. But what could that so-called moderate lawmaker do to etch their place in history rather than grab the news cycle for a few days by simply saying they’re “concerned?”
- Build a coalition of moderate colleagues
and,
- Speak to their constituents in moderate tones rather than rallying them to hate the other side
We the people don’t know that we’re under a spell. We don’t see it because we’ve been fully radicalized at this point by one viewpoint or another, someone else’s worldview, or some twisted version of a so-called leader. We might say we are moderate in our political beliefs, but most people have a very obvious bias to one political leaning or another. We are all guilty of this. Often times, it’s perhaps one single issue that makes a person who is otherwise moderate, extreme.
Even the way we consume and talk about politics and politicians is unmoderated. It’s crept into every area of our lives, and it’s hurting us. It’s the chain smoking, overeating, alcoholism of our democratic psyches.
So, how do we repair this? Moderation! Mute the channels that inflame you. Skip the posts that affirm your bias. Watch your infotainment maybe once a week? And start to use the word moderation in conversation. Speak about it as though it’s a thing, a real thing. Sure, it’s boring, but boring is good, and we could all use it, especially right now.
If we dwell in the extreme, it’s all going to look and feel extreme. But, if we step away from the spectrum just a few feet and truly recognize where we have planted ourselves, or what issues we have cultivated, it might bear some more healthy fruit to re-plant ourselves somewhere in the middle, the true center. From there, we might enjoy a new tasting food, or an herb we’ve never grown before. Yeah, the junk food, booze, and cigarettes will still be there on those far opposite sides. And you can have them once in a while, but do you really want them all the time?
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Photo by Pawel Czerwinski on Unsplash
