Ethics of the Extreme

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Abstract

Extremism, which is variously regarded as the adversary of peaceful moderation or the vanguard of righteous dissent, often is immediately recognizable, but sometimes it may be ambiguous, insidious, or undefined. Growing apprehensions about mainstream extremism reflect a linguistic contraindication that may be a symptom of cultural disorientation. Insights from neuroscience suggest that some forms of extremism may arise from an imbalance of brain pathways involved in moral reasoning, such that those signaling sacred valuations and rule processing attain dominance over those representing empathy and deliberative reasoning. If the brain be compared to an orchestra, extremism would be analogous to the unpitched percussion section taking over, the bass drum and clash cymbals intruding into orchestral harmony and drowning out the string and brass sections with harsh, metronomic, auditory hyperintensity. And yet there is a proper role for these instruments. The ideal balance, whether of neural signals or orchestral voices, requires discernment of value beyond factual information. A number of ethical approaches supply moral clarity to assist with making ethical distinctions when convictions reach into the extreme, and while helpful, these leave unanswered deeper questions of ultimate meaning.

“As a neuropsychiatrist, I wonder if the collective national amygdala is on fire, and the national prefrontal cortex is being corroded by the pervasive and ugly negativity that engulfs us all, with social media that incites its users night and day, adding gasoline to the fire.” (Henry Nasrallah)[1]

Introduction

In his speech at the 2021 National Prayer Breakfast, President Joe Biden announced, “we must confront and defeat political extremism.”[2] Any reasonable person would surely agree and hasten to condemn acts of hatred and violence committed against one’s neighbors. The language is reminiscent of the 2002 State of the Union address by former President George W. Bush, who pointed to an “axis of evil” threatening America, except that this time the named threat is within our borders. In each case assent seems at face value straightforward. Who could disagree with opposing evil or extremism?

On further scrutiny, whereas there are clear instances of dangerous extremism, there are also ambiguous examples where the meaning blurs. Paradoxically, in its applications the word “extremism” can be extremely vague. Essential to any serious attempt to confront and defeat extremism must be a clear and objective definition. In order to assess whether an idea or action qualifies as extremism, it is first necessary to distinguish it from acceptable beliefs and tolerable behaviors. Rioting must be distinguished from peaceful protest, hateful speech from rational argument, arson from lighting a candle in the darkness. A valid definition of extremism would not be just an instrument of political power useful in that moment, but an idea anchored in universally accepted principles and which holds up to scrutiny across a range of contexts.

Defining Extremism

The rhetoric that denounces extremism rarely attempts to define it. The Oxford English Dictionary defines extremism as a “disposition to go to extremes,” where ‘extreme’ can be that which is “outermost,” “farthest from the center,” “utmost,” or “uttermost.” It can also mean existing “in an exceedingly high degree,” “exceeding the limits of moderation,” or “going to great lengths.”[3]

One sense of the extreme, then, is that which is different or an outlier from the normal distribution. Someone might be extremely tall, extremely beautiful, or extremely long-lived. These examples of extremity are not threats but ought to be cherished as examples of the rich diversity of human nature.

A second sense of the extreme has to do with differences in functional capacity. The fastest runner, the most agile dancer, and the most intelligent teacher—along with those who are merely average—are further examples of welcome diversity.

A third sense of the extreme has to do with differences in effort or achievement. Someone might be extremely well read, extremely educated, or extremely strong. The musical virtuoso, the chess champion, and the Olympic gold medalist are all outliers. They have perfected their talents to the extreme and deserve our admiration. Extreme performance in sports, science, and the arts, within ethical constraints of safety and fairness, is rightly celebrated.

Other examples evoke concern. The extreme collector who never throws away a newspaper but clutters his bedroom from floor to ceiling with decades of yellowed crumbling newsprint, or the obsessive-compulsive executive who consistently arrives late to work because she ritualistically washes her hands repeatedly, are also outliers. Their habits, though mostly harmless, compete with other pursuits and may be for them a source of anxiety.

A fourth sense of the extreme illustrates the fluidity of language over time. A brief search of the internet finds that the adjective ‘extreme’ (sometimes shortened to ‘xtreme’) applies to cable service data transmission speeds, television channel subscriptions, intense athletic fitness training, unusual vacation destinations, tattoos, whitening toothpastes, hairstyling gels, deodorants, and exotic pets. In American culture, where more of just about anything is often assumed to be better, labeling a product as ‘extreme’ has proven to be a successful marketing ploy. Extremism in this context is an enticing buzzword.

These alternately bad and good meanings of extreme, when juxtaposed, exemplify Chesterston’s observation that “a word has no loyalty; it can be betrayed into any service or twisted into any treason.”[4] Absent a clear and consistent definition, nowhere more than in politics, the vocabulary of extremism too easily becomes a tool by which to disparage those with whom one disagrees. Even if the moral aspect is unspecified, labeling one’s adversaries as extremists has rhetorical currency in projecting an image of being reasonable and on the side of restraint and moderation against a dangerously transgressing enemy.

The Moral Evaluation

The accusation of extremism goes beyond having an extreme trait or going to an extreme length. Put differently, the idea of extremism surpasses the factual realm of state or degree. To choose whether to apply the label of extremism requires a moral evaluation beyond what the dictionary supplies. There are a number of ways to do this.

One approach regards extremism as a departure from the virtue of moderation. For Aristotle, virtue was to be found in striving for the mean between two extremes. For example, midway between the vices of cowardice and recklessness is the virtue of courage. Whereas this approach offers balance, it provides little guidance as to exactly where along the continuum the center is to be found. Further, charting a mean suggests a static relationship between moral opposites, whereas in real life these relationships may be dynamic and dependent on uncertain or changing circumstances. Excessive moderation, too, can become a threat when compelling moral obligations are present. How compelling those obligations are and to whom they apply are also value judgments. A grieving family would not be reassured by a surgeon’s remark that he exercised careful moderation in attempting to save the life of their loved one on the operating table.

A consequentialist ethical perspective examines anticipated outcomes resulting from extreme acts and weighs potential benefits versus potential harms. Driving extremely fast may get an acutely sick passenger to the emergency room faster, but at the risk en route of crash and injury. There comes a point on the speedometer where the cost/benefit analysis finds that velocity’s risk exceeds its benefit. Difficulties arise when predictions are uncertain or the anticipated goods are dissimilar and cannot be assessed on the same value scale. A further question, at the societal level, is how much extremism should be tolerated when balancing the good of individual liberty against the potential harm to others?

A deontological ethical perspective judges certain kinds of extreme beliefs or behaviors to be intrinsically right or wrong. From this perspective, violent force that injures the life of innocent bystanders is categorically wrong. Intent also matters. One ought not to intend to imperil innocent people. Dilemmas arise, however, in situations where violence is unavoidable or seems morally justifiable. In such cases, rule-governed exceptions may apply. A classic example is just war theory. According to Thomas Aquinas, for a war to be just, three conditions must be met.[5] First, the fighter must have sovereign authority to act with violence. Second, the cause must be just. Third, the fighter must act with the right intention, not to harm or commit cruelty, but to establish or restore peace.

For each of these ethical perspectives, the gathering of facts and the exercise of reason takes the moral analysis further, but not to completion. Extremism remains at best a contested definition and at worst a fuzzy quality of irreducibly subjective interpretation. Evaluations of extremism are laden with differing assumptions about the relative value of various harms, whether measured in terms of pain, privation, or symbolic affront. There are also difficult questions of complicity and under what conditions and to what degree a majority, by tacit sympathy or by silence, may be partly responsible for extreme actions committed by a fringe group.

The Medical Evaluation

The distinction between reasonableness and extremism in some ways parallels that of health and illness. Definitions of illness may provide some guidance in understanding political extremism. Both constructs—reasonableness and health—assume a normative natural order that in extremism or illness is disordered, whether cognitively, motivationally, or bodily.

Since the 1940s, the field of psychology has interpreted the tendency to view the world and other people in an inflexible manner as ideological rigidity. The “inflexibility hypothesis” postulates that ideological rigidity is rooted in general psychological rigidity.[6] Within this framework the motivation to seek cognitive closure through absolute answers to problems leads to an intolerance of ambiguity, rejection of new or different ideas, and a prejudice against those who express alternative views.[7] Anger arising from personal or collective marginalization, exclusion, humiliation, or betrayal can further drive extremism by catalyzing a struggle to restore meaning and worth.[8] One formulation of this model is “significance quest theory.” This theory posits that extremely violent behavior, which includes a willingness to fight and sacrifice, seeks to obtain or restore an individual’s experience of personal significance and efficacy.[9] Additional factors that may contribute to radicalism include a desire for adventure, a desire for life meaningfulness, identification with others who are also traumatized, and “a desire for personal redemption from corruption.”[10]

In a remarkable series of experiments, a team of Spanish researchers recruited a cohort of radical young men who openly expressed a desire to engage in violence for jihadist causes and subjected them to functional MRI brain scans. The researchers found that higher scores on a survey of willingness to fight and die for sacred values—that is, moral values that they perceived to be non-negotiable and inviolable—correlated with neural activation in the left inferior frontal gyrus (IFG), which is a brain region associated with rule processing. Then, when the subjects were asked to play a video game that was programmed to cause them to feel socially excluded, their willingness to fight and die increased even for non-sacred values. The researchers concluded that social exclusion may contribute to radicalization and an increased propensity toward violence.[11] In a second study, as the jihadist men rated their sacred values on a questionnaire, fMRI detected deactivation in a network that includes the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC), which is a brain region associated with deliberative reasoning and integration of cost-benefit assessment. Higher scores of willingness to fight and die for their values were associated with increased activation in the ventromedial prefrontal cortex (vmPFC), which is a brain region associated with subjective valuation.[12]

These findings suggest that, through the lens of neuroscience, violent political extremism may be thought of as a disconnection syndrome in which brain networks associated with moral reasoning that normally function together become disrupted. As neural structures corresponding to ingrained rule-based thoughts and valuations attain dominance, they become isolated from other neural sources of available knowledge and decisional input, much as the young radical jihadists felt socially isolated. Excessive fixation on perceived threats to sacred values knocks moral reasoning off balance to the neglect of other streams of thought, such as empathy, the neuroanatomical substrates of which are inversely related to those associated with predatory violence.[13] Further along the trajectory of disengagement from one’s moral compass, mental dehumanization of others makes it easier to rationalize committing violence.[14]

I would like to suggest that the normative natural order for moral reasoning is one in which its neurobiological substrates function in proper balance. Suppression of or disconnection from a part, such as the neural substrate for empathy, amounts to a neurological deficit and thus a disordered brain state. Even so, defining what makes a proper balance is a question incompletely answerable by neuroscience.

The moral evaluation of extreme beliefs and behaviors requires something further. A moral standard is needed by which to judge whether a particular belief or behavior is a matter of resoluteness or obsession, faithfulness or hubris, good or evil. Neuroscience is a helpful source of information about the brain but is an insufficient tool for reaching ultimate moral conclusions. Too much emphasis on neuroscience to the exclusion of complementary sources of knowledge tends toward a reductionistic interpretation of human beings that itself can lead to the extremism of materialistic philosophy.

Medical analogies can also be instruments of abuse. Soviet policy under Stalin notoriously characterized political dissenters, including human rights activists, as psychiatrically ill. Once diagnosed, the accused had no right of appeal but were systematically confined to prisons masquerading as psychiatric hospitals where they received involuntary treatment.[15]

Mainstream Extremism

Defining extremism requires a reference point from which the beliefs or behaviors in question depart and, on that basis, are judged to be extreme. Some voices from the political left view the threat of extremism as coming from the right,[16] while some voices from the political right view the threat as coming from the left.[17] In the current climate of social unrest, apprehensions are arising across the political spectrum over the concern that extremism is becoming mainstream.[18]

The concept of “mainstream extremism” would be an oxymoron if extremism were defined as that which is far from the cultural norm. Any ideology or behavior, once it becomes part of the cultural mainstream, would no longer be distinguishable from common thought and practice and would cease to qualify as extreme. A boundlessly flexible moral relativism eventually annihilates the very possibility of the extreme.

The Spiritual Evaluation

Nevertheless, if there exists beyond culture a transcendent, universal standard for truth and conduct, then “mainstream extremism” is indeed a valid category, and quite a serious one. For those who believe that the Old and New Testaments, including the texts of Genesis 3 and Romans 3:23, are the revealed word of God, all of humanity has fallen into sin and into the extreme condition of being infinitely separated from God.

Thankfully, God’s response to confront and defeat the extremism of human rebellion is not to condemn the world (John 3:17), but to extend the loving hand of salvation through his Son, Jesus Christ (John 3:16, 14:6; Romans 10:9). This gospel is a message of extreme grace.

The Christian’s response, in contrast to that of the violent zealot, is one of gratitude and humility. Dietrich Bonhoeffer contrasts the “morbid restlessness which is so characteristic of fanaticism” with the Word of God that “is weaker than any ideology” because it “takes the risk of meeting the scorn of men and being rejected” and “recognizes opposition when it meets it, and is prepared to suffer it.”[19] Infused by God’s grace, obedient life in Christ produces love, joy, peace, forbearance, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. Against such things there is no limit placed on their expression (Galatians 5: 22–23).

Acting out extremist urges may satisfy for a moment, but ultimately disappoints. There is a far greater and lasting victory along the straight line that passes through Calvary’s cross and leads to that heavenly city, which Augustine wrote was “glorious beyond compare,” that destination where “victory is truth, dignity is holiness, peace is happiness, life is eternity.”[20] 

References

[1] Henry A. Nasrallah, “Neuropolitics in the Age of Extremism: Brain Regions Involved in Hatred,” Current Psychiatry 17, no. 10 (2018): 6–7.

[2] Fin Gómez, “At Prayer Breakfast, Biden Calls on Americans to ‘Confront and Defeat Political Extremism,’” CBS News, February 4, 2021, https://www.cbsnews.com/news/biden-prayer-breakfast-political-extremism/.

[3]The Compact Oxford English Dictionary (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1971).

[4] G. K. Chesterton, “New Religion and New Irreligion,” in The Collected Works of G. K. Chesterton, Vol. XXVIII, ed. L. J. Clipper (San Francisco, CA: Ignatius Press, 1987), 75.

[5] James Turner Johnson, “Just War, as It Was and Is,” First Things, January 2005, 14–24.

[6] Gordon W. Allport, The Nature of Prejudice (Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley,1954).

[7] Leor Zmigrod, Peter Jason Rentfrow, and Trevor W. Robbins, “Cognitive Inflexibility Predicts Extremist Attitudes,” Frontiers in Psychology 10 (2019): 989, https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2019.00989.

[8] Zmigrod, Rentfrow, and Robbins, “Cognitive Inflexibility Predicts Extremist Attitudes,” 989.

[9] Zmigrod, Rentfrow, and Robbins, “Cognitive Inflexibility Predicts Extremist Attitudes,” 989; Arie W. Kruglanski et al., “The Psychology of Radicalization and Deradicalization: How Significance Quest Impacts Violent Extremism,” Advances in Political Psychology 35, suppl. 1 (2014): 69–93.

[10] Sarah Canna, Carley St. Clair, and Abigail Desjardins, Strategic Multilayer Assessment (SMA): Neuroscience Insights on Radicalization and Mobilation to Violence: A Review, 2^nd ed. (Nationwide SAR Initiative, 2012), 35.

[11] Nafees Hamid and Clara Pretus, “The Neuroscience of Terrorism: How We Convinced a Group of Radicals to Let Us Scan Their Brains,” The Conversation, Phys.org, June 12, 2019, https://phys.org/news/2019-06-neuroscience-terrorism-convinced-group-radicals.html.

[12] Hamid and Pretus, “The Neuroscience of Terrorism.”

[13] Doriana Chialant, Judith Edersheim, and Bruce H. Price, “The Dialectic Between Empathy and Violence: An Opportunity for Intervention,” The Journal of Neuropsychiatry and Clinical Neurosciences 28, no. 4 (2016): 273–85.

[14] Canna, St. Clair, and Desjardins, Strategic Multilayer Assessment, 35.

[15] Christopher Howard, “Medicine Betrayed: The Participation of Doctors in Human Rights Abuses,” Journal of Medical Ethics 20, no. 1 (1994): 61–62; Richard J. Bonnie, “Political Abuse of Psychiatry in the Soviet Union and in China: Complexities and Controversies,” The Journal of the American Academy of Psychiatry and the Law 30, no. 1 (2002): 136–44.

[16] Kevin Johnson, “Domestic Extremism Has Become ‘Mainstream,’ Could Threaten American life for 20 Years,” USA Today, February 4, 2021, https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2021/02/04/domestic-terrorism-could-pose-terrifying-threat-next-20-years/4387600001/; Gene Demby, “When White Extremism Seeps into the Mainstream,” National Public Radio, January 15, 2021, https://www.npr.org/sections/codeswitch/2021/01/15/957421470/when-white-extremism-seeps-into-the-mainstream.

[17] Andy Ngo, “Antifa’s Deadly Year Shows the Extremism on the Far Left,” Newsweek, December 12, 2019, https://www.newsweek.com/antifa-far-left-violence-extremism-deadly-year-opnion-1477065; Cullen McCue, “The Rise of Socially Acceptable Far Left Extremism and How to Combat It,” Reality Circuit, February 17, 2020, https://realitycircuit.com/2020/02/17/the-rise-of-socially-acceptable-far-left-extremism-how-to-combat-it/; Counter Extremism Project, “U.S. Far-Left Groups,” https://www.counterextremism.com/sites/default/files/U.S.%20Far-Left%20Groups_PDF_100220.pdf.

[18] Johnson, “Domestic Extremism Has Become ‘Mainstream’”; Demby, “When White Extremism Seeps into the Mainstream”; R. R. Reno, “Anger Politics on the Right,” First Things, February 2021, 63–66.

[19] Dietrich Bonhoeffer, The Cost of Discipleship (New York: MacMillan, 1979), 27.

[20] Augustine of Hippo, City of God (New York: Doubleday Image Books, 1958), 77.

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