The Coward Who Sought Middle Ground

Once upon a time, there was a society which had normal problems. Its fault-lines were apparent, and they never went away; sometimes, people would grow apart, and at other times, they would come together. There were several divisions: rich and poor, educated and uneducated, forward caste and backward caste, employed and unemployed, male and female, capitalists and socialists.

This society, like many others, was subject to empirical laws that governed most other realms. People carried a variety of opinions on every single issue, usually forming a spectrum. There were few people at the extremes - visionaries and lunatics - but a vast majority didn't hold such radical views. The distribution of their opinions on any particular topic (agreement-disagreement plotted on the X-axis) formed a typical bell-curve.

With the passage of time, and the advent of magazines and social media, these opinions became louder and larger in number. It then became possible to gain not only fame but also wealth through neatly phrased sentences, which mimicked an ideology. At this stage, the curve became "taller" (it grew in amplitude) but did not change its shape.

Soon, when the noise of opinions was deafening, it became important to stand apart from the crowd to be heard. Extreme positions, bordering on the illogical, were incentivised. Magazines were willing to pay for extreme rights and savage lefts. There was less interest in the middle; after all, it was mainstream.

So the distribution was changed.

More people were drawn away from the middle, towards the extremes. Soon, the convergence of opinions - a consensus - was no longer an outcome of discussion; it was an anomaly. The bell curve was ripped apart, and the extremes grew in power. People in the middle were now left without support.

When such blocks of opinions were formed, with seemingly no angle of reconciliation, people were incentivised to join these blocks. It became impossible to stand one's ground in the middle; neither was it safe, nor was it brave. The loud voices on the brink became crusaders of change; they existed on either side. The middle was for the weak.

The bell curve lies inverted. Compromise is an ugly word. No moderate ever got many Facebook likes.