IIT Kharagpur: Extreme choices and behaviors

The following is an excerpt from a samvaad (dialogue) session with Acharya Prashant.

Questioner (Q): I have observed a trend in the recent past that the number of people who are resorting to extremities — be it political, religious, or other social extremities — has increased in number. If we put things in a larger context, I think that this problem is going to emerge and haunt our culture specifically in the coming days.

I also see that extremity as behavior is penetrating things that were not extreme, to begin with, and this has been more of a reactive kind of mechanism. I am talking about the people who, for example, associate themselves with Sanatana Dharma, or people who associate themselves with other religious ideologies that are not extreme. They have resorted to extremities as a reaction because they see no other way out or for some other reason they cite.

So, do we, as a society, want to see ourselves develop in that fashion? How exactly should we have a vision of the future? Where exactly are we heading? And should we be heading that way?

Acharya Prashant (AP): See, every extreme denotes a thirst. Be it the extreme food consumption of somebody recuperating from a recent break-up, the extreme possessiveness of a protective husband, the extreme competitiveness of a job seeker, or the…