…well, moderately sexy, anyway. Tom Hodgkinson on why taking things steady is best… on balance

As a teenager, I remember liking a famous phrase from Blake’s Proverbs of Hell: “The road of excess leads to the palace of wisdom”. I took it as a licence to drink or take drugs to excess. Wisdom would surely follow. However, as Mark Vernon points out, Blake also wrote, “More! More! is the cry of a mistaken soul, less than All cannot satisfy Man.”

So Blake wasn’t recommending hedonism. I think he was just suggesting that people have to find their own path through life, make their own mistakes, and that there is no point introducing puritanical prohibitions (like “the war on drugs” or prohibition in America, 1920-33). Less is more.

However the proverb, if it is one, has contributed to a myth that most of us have at some time been seduced by, which is that extremes are sexy. They’re rock’n’roll. Diogenes, De Quincey, Jimi Hendrix, Sid Vicious: there’s something enthralling and theatrical about people who take it to the edge. “Live fast, die young”.

This morning on Melvyn Bragg’s In Our Time the discussion was on Aristotle, and it was striking what a boring philosopher he is, in a sense (Aristotle, not Melvyn). He’s all about the average, the halfway house, balance and moderation. The famous example of what he called the “golden mean” is the virtue of courage, which is the middle way between foolhardiness and recklessness. All very true, but how do you make these ideas attractive to the young?

If I was a young creative in ad agency, and was tasked with creating a series of billboards to promote the great philosopher, I would propose the slogan “make moderation sexy”. Why should pushing limits be seen as cool?

Certainly as you grow older, moderation becomes more attractive. In the search for eudaimonia, the Greek word meaning “good spiritedness” or “happiness” or “fulfilment”, excitement is to be avoided. Boring but true. Goodbye to saying, “Where shall we go now?” Hello to saying, “I think I’ll turn in.”

Blake’s proverb should be rewritten for an older crowd. I suggest: “The road of going to bed early leads to the modestly appointed cottage of wisdom”.

How about you? Do you embrace extremes or toddle along in the middle lane?

PS We are taking a break from “A Drink with the Idler” this week. We’ll be back next week when Idler cover star Rupert Sheldrake will chat on the topic, “ways to go beyond”. Subscribers can watch or listen to recordings of previous drinks in their account here. Non-subscribers, you can watch clips on our YouTube channel.

PPS You’re invited to a party in London on Wednesday 6 December to celebrate thirty years of the Idler. Entry is free when you pre-order a copy of our new limited-edition publication, XXX: Thirty Years of the Idler. Click here to reserve your place. To pre-order the book but not come to the party, click here.

SELECTED COMMENTS

These comments were mailed to us after an earlier version of this piece was sent out as a newsletter. We like to publish a selection and reserve the right to edit them for clarity. Feel free to drop us a line with your thoughts.

Sir: Everything in moderation. Including moderation. On occasion…
Jane Mann

Sir: I am with you on Aristotle. But if “golden mean” is middle class life in contemporary Western societes, then sometimes it means the worst. White collar employees work the longest hours. House in the suburbs. Being in debt up to your ears. Constant level of low to medium grade stress. Much better to combine short periods of high activity with long periods of leisure. High level of stress occasionaly, then no stress at all. Simple food most of the time, feasts sometimes and so on.
Bana

Sir: Only one woman? Really?
Fiona Flores Watson

Sir: Extremes.
Matthew Green

Sir: I wish I could toddle on in the middle lane. But life throws all this stuff at me that forces me to stir up my inner courage and go balls-to-the-wall! I just wish life would calm the fuck down.
Tyron Love

Sir: The Buddha too taught the middle way, but while I do generally tread a very moderate path myself, I also tend toward the view that when advocating “moderation in all things”, the emphasis should be on the word “all”, so the statement becomes reflexive and applies to itself. After all, if we withdraw from the extremes, the new limits become our new extremes, and so we withdraw further in a repeating cycle until at last life becomes narrow and mean. But if we apply moderation to itself we can have an occasional blow-out which resets the boundaries, testing the validity of those extremes, even if only to leave us with a sore head and swearing never to indulge as much again.
Chris Bramhall

Sir: Still embracing extremes.
David Brook

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