In the middle

Being a 25 year old, around 90% of the people I meet, range between 22-35 years of age. Though the sample size is inadequate to extrapolate and make general statements, I am drawing my observations in this post, gathered over a bunch of such interactions over the past 6-7 years.  

About 80% of the people I meet, read about, follow on social media are either very strongly opinionated or have no opinions at all. People either care too much or too little. People either complain constantly or are complacent. People are either too optimistic or have lost all hope. People call themselves liberals or conservatives. So, the questions I keep asking myself is, “Why aren’t we in the middle?”, “Is it alright to have such extremities?” and “Is it possible to be a little bit of both?”

These interactions about a myriad of topics ranging from geo-politics to childhood cartoons and deep learning algorithms to Roman civilization has taught me a little bit about people’s personalities and how people draw their satisfaction from being proven right. Now this is something we all know and I’m no pundit on human behavior or psychology. But it’s something that deeply fascinates me. And learning what makes each of us tick could help us find the answer to why we aren’t in the middle. So, I went through the following phases to analyze this.

Phase 1: Self analysis:

I try quite hard to be in the middle. Not have extreme opinions on anything. When I hear a story, read an article or absorb any piece of information, I try to take it with a pinch of salt and skepticism. I try to consume the same information from various sources. But during this process of self analysis, I inferred something quite significant. I realized how I had made no attempt to express my thoughts, opinions out in the open. And no other better way than to pen them down. Now you know why you’re reading about this, don’t you?

Phase 2: Learn about the source:

I started out an experiment where I started asking people where they consumed their news and other information from. While it helped me learn a good deal about their preferences, I also understood why they believed what they believed in. In this era of fake news and alternative facts, I tried to ask them how much they believed in what they read. Though most people didn’t entirely rely on what they read or watched, they seemed to be influenced by it in some way or the other.  

Phase 3: Learn why they think it’s right:

Certain life experiences drive people to have certain biases towards/against a certain process, race, gender and so on. What I learned is that - something new that follows intuition and supports the biases overrules logic most times. Regardless of how hard one tries to disassociate oneself and their preconceived notion with the newly learned piece of information, they generally tend to formulate their opinion based on this information that transitions into a fact in the head. And once a fact, it becomes quite hard (not impossible) to unlearn it.

Phase 4: What’s next after the fact is established? :

Humans have an incessant need to be proven right at all times. We all try our level best trying to show our friends, relatives, colleagues how our opinions (which we consider facts) are almost always right. While the streak of modesty in us tries to remind us of all the possible ways our logic could be failing us, we still don’t take a step back and think. And every time we desperately try to prove to someone why what we think is correct, we also try to prove the other person wrong. We stop listening and we impose. This is where I believe the nature of extremity crawls in. At the time of information consumption, we are all in the middle. We are learning something we do not know, it’s all new. Once it transitions as a fact and we want to convince someone else why we think we’re right, we push ourselves into believing that it’s the only single truth ever known to mankind and how every one else who thinks otherwise, is an idiot.

These 4 phases didn’t entirely help me arrive at any specific conclusions about the questions I had. I’m still in the process of understanding why being in the middle is important to me. Whatever we learn, we learn from nature. While extreme ecosystems does support life, what we know from science is moderate ecosystem is what lets life grow and expand. From the fear of getting too philosophical and preachy, I’d like to stop my first post with the question I’d posed somewhere in the middle (Haha, you see that?) of my post – “Why aren’t we in the middle?”