Extreme choices and behaviors || IIT Kharagpur (2022)

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—have 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 a behavior is penetrating things which 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 extreme anger of a jilted lover—all these extremes denote a thirst. Do you see this?

If today you are seeing so many extremes in all ways in the society, they are indicative of a central, common problem. And there is not just religious extremism,