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, and their sequels. A short form of the first story has long been in my quote collection[2].

A carefree young lady was traveling through a forest. Deep in the woods, her party was stopped by a highwayman, who slew her unarmed companions. The thug 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 interminable and 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. A well-known expert in martial arts, the hermit was also a follower of the Middle Way, versed in Ancient Wisdom, and revered as a Spiritual Guide. 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 a Golden Mean. 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 Traveler 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 meditation, 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, recently made up as inspired by an example from an Ayn Rand essay.

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 inspiring 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 that cup! I am the Priest of Life and that 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 started arguing, but were prompty interrupted by the hermit. And so they 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, unable to hear the laughter 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.

Now, although these stories each stand on their own, combining them together and with the following complements may bring additional insight.

After three days and a half, the hermit eventually forced the bandit to release the woman and leave her half of her gold. A few weeks later, while spending his hard-earned loot at a tavern, the highwayman told this most peculiar story of his to a lawyer friend. «Bummer» commented the friend, «all you had to do was demand twice as much as you really wanted!»

That same year, the young lady, recovering from her trauma, also went on a pilgrimage to the famed Temple of Life and Death. Faced with the same greeting from the two monks, she presumptuously tried to determine which was the Priest of Life and which was the Priest of Death by asking them questions. But the discussion that ensued between the two monks soon became too abstract, complex and esoteric for her feeble and ignorant female mind to follow. And so after a while, she took the first opportunity of a silence in the debate to chime in and propose: «You two wisemen must have very sore throats from such an extended intellectual controversy. Why don't you each drink from the tea you brought? The humble woman I am can wait to be served after the luminaries of wisdom you are.»

As for the moral of the stories, I can find a lot of them, but I probably should let you find for yourself, and so I'll make a few suggestions. Every crime is half of a double crime; half a crime is a still crime. It is the negation of rights and not the extent of an action that characterizes a crime. The demand of honest people never departs from plain justice, but there is no limit to the demands of dishonest people. You judge a tree by the fruits it bears. A clever person may or may not anticipate future fruits, but anyone can see past fruits. The wisest people are not always those best educated and other proclaimed «intellectuals». Responsibility — eating one's own dogfood — is what keeps each of us on the right track. The best way to live is found not by imposing the conclusion of a debate (politics), but by letting each person live the way he recommends to others (freedom).

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