On Extremism

Will Shetterly has attracted more than his share of opprobrium within the SFF community. I have no intention of going into that right now.

Recently he posted an interesting quote explaining the attractions of extremism that he attributes to John Cleese:

The biggest advantage of extremism is that it makes you feel GOOD because it provides you with enemies.

Let me explain. The great thing about having enemies is that you can pretend that all the badness in the whole world is in your enemies, and all the goodness in the whole world is in YOU. Attractive, isn't it?

So, if you have a lot of anger and resentment in you anyway and you therefore enjoy abusing people, then you can pretend that you're only doing it because these enemies of yours are such very bad persons! And if it wasn't for them, you'd actually be good natured, and courteous, and rational all the time. So, if you want to FEEL GOOD, become an extremist.

You can strut around, abusing people, and telling them you could eat them for breakfast and still think of yourself as a champion of the truth. A fighter for the greater good. And not the rather sad paranoid schizoid that you really are.

—John Cleese

Shetterly argues, I think convincingly, that this helps us understand some of the acrimony experienced within SFF fandom over the past year.