I tend to agree. I see things very much in terms of "chemical bonding" -- obviously biased from my training as a chemist. The two contributing "extreme" positions -- the individual atomic orbitals in chemistry, or the "full authoritarian" v.s. "full libertarian" in socio-politics are only stable states on their own in a vacuum. The "lowest energy", "most stable", etc... state is produced by combining elements of the two to form a bond -- however the contribution for a good bond is almost never 50:50, it can even be as extreme as like 95:5, but it still needs *SOMETHING* from the other extreme contributing state to reach something stable and generally "better." Of note there are any number of theoretical contributions to try and mix the two atomic orbitals, and just like the bond is the most stable state, the "antibond" produced by a different mixing/contribution of the individual atomic orbitals ("extremes:) is actually the least stable state and is far worse than either of the contributing "extremes" composing it would be on their own.
My regard to the current trend of things is that we are drifting to an "antibonding" society where the influences of authoritarianism and libertarianism are being mixed together into the worst possible combination, worse than the extremes of any of the individual contributors on their own. E.g. "Free speech and personal rights" ... but increasingly not for actual people, only for corporate personhood and mostly for the most powerful tech and other monopolies, actual people are being restrained by the state power that should be reserved for the monopolies. Welfare ... but increasingly only for Wall street and the military industrial complex not for say the homeless who might need some help/treatment to get back on their feet and back into society. Etc.... My take is increasingly this is why we see growing interest in (re)trying various left/right and authoritarian/libertarian extremes -- just like the atoms forming a bond, as the antibonding orbital gets populated the contributing atoms go their separate ways and revert back to just their contributing atomic orbitals; as unstable as those may be, the individual "extreme" atomic orbitals are always preferable to populating the antibonding orbital.
I tend to agree. I see things very much in terms of "chemical bonding" -- obviously biased from my training as a chemist. The two contributing "extreme" positions -- the individual atomic orbitals in chemistry, or the "full authoritarian" v.s. "full libertarian" in socio-politics are only stable states on their own in a vacuum. The "lowest energy", "most stable", etc... state is produced by combining elements of the two to form a bond -- however the contribution for a good bond is almost never 50:50, it can even be as extreme as like 95:5, but it still needs *SOMETHING* from the other extreme contributing state to reach something stable and generally "better." Of note there are any number of theoretical contributions to try and mix the two atomic orbitals, and just like the bond is the most stable state, the "antibond" produced by a different mixing/contribution of the individual atomic orbitals ("extremes:) is actually the least stable state and is far worse than either of the contributing "extremes" composing it would be on their own.
My regard to the current trend of things is that we are drifting to an "antibonding" society where the influences of authoritarianism and libertarianism are being mixed together into the worst possible combination, worse than the extremes of any of the individual contributors on their own. E.g. "Free speech and personal rights" ... but increasingly not for actual people, only for corporate personhood and mostly for the most powerful tech and other monopolies, actual people are being restrained by the state power that should be reserved for the monopolies. Welfare ... but increasingly only for Wall street and the military industrial complex not for say the homeless who might need some help/treatment to get back on their feet and back into society. Etc.... My take is increasingly this is why we see growing interest in (re)trying various left/right and authoritarian/libertarian extremes -- just like the atoms forming a bond, as the antibonding orbital gets populated the contributing atoms go their separate ways and revert back to just their contributing atomic orbitals; as unstable as those may be, the individual "extreme" atomic orbitals are always preferable to populating the antibonding orbital.
That drift was 15 - 20 years ago. Already happened.
Yes. Good analogy. Much better than black and white dichotomies.
Nice take.