Middle way

Two Stories about the Middle Way

By Faré [1]

Whenever I am called an extremist, usually by people who call for a Third Way between capitalism and socialism (just like Benito Mussolini did), I like to tell one or both of these two stories. A short form of the first story has long been in my quote collection[2].

A carefree young lady travelled alone through a forest. Deep in the woods, she was stopped by a highwayman, who demanded all her gold and said he would let her go alive if only she'd grant him her charms for a week. Fearless but not stupid the young woman mustered all her courage and ran away. And she ran and ran, for several long desperate minutes, with the mugger tailing her, insulting her and telling her all the tortures she would endure when he'd catch her, until at long last she arrived breathless at a glade where a hermit was sitting in meditation before his hut. She threw herself at the feet of the hermit and begged him to help her. An expert in martial arts, the hermit was also a follower of the Middle Way, well versed in Ancient Wisdom. Cautious to never use violence but for Greater Justice, he proposed to hear both parties and give a verdict based on his Most Just Philosophy of the Middle Way. "This bandit wants to rob me and rape me", said the woman, "please protect me." "This whore trespassed on my territory", asserted the highwayman, "I'm demanding all her gold and one week of her charms as a legitimate compensation for this aggression". "I won't give you anything," replied the woman, "for my gold and my body are mine, and you have no title to this forest." As the highwayman started insulting her and she began replying, the Wise Man sternly shouted "Hush!" With both scared parties respectfully listening, he then pronounced these words of Wisdom: "Justice always lies in the Middle Way. Far from either of you being Right, each of you detains but half of the Truth. The Truth lies in the Middle between your two extreme claims. Thus, the Highwayman will take half of what the Traveller owns, and half of it only; moreover, he will rape her for three days and a half, and three days half a day only." Having delivered his Wise Sentence, the hermit returned to his hut, and proceeded with breathing exercises to ignore the screams of a woman all too attached to her earthly comfort.

And if the point isn't clear enough, here is the second story, based on an example by Ayn Rand.

Some time later, our hermit, having relinquished half of his hut to the bandit, then half of the rest, decided that life in the forest was not as satisfying as it used to be, and went on a pilgrimage to the remote Temple of Life and Death. At the end of his trip up a tall bare mountain under a burning sun, the weary and thirsty hermit was greeted by a monk at the door of the temple. "Peace on you, Pilgrim. I am the Priest of Life. Here is some hot tea to quench your thirst, please drink from this cup." As the hermit reached for the cup of tea that was offered to him, another monk came running out of the temple, and shouted "Lo and behold, Stranger, do not drink from this cup! I am the Priest of Life and this is the Priest of Death. What he is offering you is a powerful poison one drop of which could kill ten people. Here is some hot tea for you. Please drink from my cup and not from his." "Do not listen to him!" exclaimed the first monk. "He is the Priest of Death, and his cup contains the deadly poison, please drink from my cup and refrain from drinking from his." The two monks turned their pleading eyes to a serene man. "Well well well," said the hermit calmly, "I am an adept of the Middle Way, and I can tell that far from either of you being Right, each of you detains but half of the Truth. The Truth lies in the Middle between your two extreme claims. And thus, I will drink half of the first cup, and half the second cup." And so did the hermit proceed to spill half of each cup, mix the remaining liquids, and drink the mix. Shortly thereafter, he died writhing in horrific agony, not hearing the laugh of the Priest of Death, and the lament of the Priest of Life.

I will leave the moral of the story to Thomas Paine: Moderation in temper is always a virtue; but moderation in principle is always a vice.

Ayn Rand

"There are two sides to every issue: one side is right

and the other is wrong, but the middle is always evil. The man who is wrong still retains some respect for truth, if, only, by accepting the responsibility of choice. But the man in the middle is the knave who blanks out the truth in order to pretend that no choice or values exist, who is willing to sit out the course of any battle, willing to cash in on the blood of the innocent or to crawl on his belly to the guilty, who dispenses justice by condemning both the robber and the robbed to jail, who solves conflicts by ordering the thinker and the fool to meet each other halfway. In any compromise between food and poison, it is only death that can win. In any compromise between good and evil, it is only evil that can profit. In that transfusion of blood which drains the good to feed the evil, the compromiser is the transmitting rubber tube"

Ayn Rand, Atlas Shrugged, p. 965-966