Political moderates are often regarded as reasonable simply because they occupy a position somewhere between two extremes. Extremists, meanwhile, are dismissed as irrational, dangerous, or fanatical.

But moderation is not necessarily evidence of reason, any more than extremism is necessarily evidence of error.

Sometimes, the extremist is simply the more honest and consistent advocate of principles the moderate already accepts.

And that should concern the moderate considerably more than it usually does.

The Problem With Halfway Principles

Consider two people who agree that government should redistribute wealth to achieve greater economic equality.

One believes this should be accomplished through moderate taxation and social programs. The other believes that private ownership of productive property should be abolished altogether.

The moderate condemns the extremist for going too far.

But too far according to what principle?

If economic equality justifies violating property rights, why should those violations stop at some politically convenient percentage? If one person's need establishes a moral claim upon another person's earnings, what principle determines when that claim becomes illegitimate?

The extremist may simply be following the moderate's premises to conclusions the moderate finds uncomfortable.

The disagreement is often over how much coercion is acceptable, rather than whether coercion is justified in the first place.

And when the disagreement concerns degree rather than principle, the more consistent advocate possesses an important argumentative advantage.

The Extremist's Advantage

Political extremists frequently possess something moderates lack: ideological consistency.

They take an accepted premise and follow it toward its logical conclusion without allowing political convenience, public discomfort, or electoral calculations to interrupt them.

This doesn't make them correct.

A perfectly consistent argument built upon a false premise remains false.

But it does expose something important about the moderate who shares that premise while rejecting its implications.

If you believe the state has the moral authority to control economic activity for the collective good, the person demanding more extensive control isn't necessarily contradicting you.

He may simply be asking why you refuse to follow your own reasoning.

If you believe individual rights can be overridden whenever a sufficiently large majority demands it, what principled objection remains when that majority demands something truly oppressive?

At what point does a principle you consider virtuous suddenly become vicious?

And why?

Moderation Cannot Rescue a Bad Premise

Imagine someone arguing that theft becomes morally acceptable when the proceeds are distributed to sufficiently deserving recipients.

One person proposes taking 10 percent of someone's earnings. Another proposes taking 90 percent.

The first calls himself moderate. The second is condemned as an extremist.

Yet neither has established the moral legitimacy of taking what belongs to someone else without consent.

Their disagreement over percentages does nothing to resolve the underlying question.

A smaller violation of a right doesn't establish the legitimacy of the violation.

Nor does a larger violation become wrong merely because it is larger.

The relevant question is whether the action is justified at all.

This is why political moderation, treated as a virtue in itself, can become an intellectual refuge for people unwilling to examine their own assumptions.

They mistake restraint in applying a principle for proof that the principle is sound.

When the Logical Conclusion Becomes Unacceptable

There is a valuable intellectual test that people across the political spectrum should apply to their beliefs:

If consistently applying your principles produces outcomes you find morally unacceptable, you should reconsider the principles themselves.

That doesn't automatically mean every extreme application is logically required. Some principles contain legitimate limits, and those limits can be defended rationally.

But those limits must be established, rather than invented whenever the consequences become embarrassing.

A person who supports individual liberty, for example, need not support the liberty to murder, steal, or enslave. Respecting individual rights already entails respecting the equal rights of others.

The limitation follows from the principle itself.

By contrast, someone who advocates sacrificing individual rights to collective demands must explain why the sacrifice should stop wherever his personal comfort ends.

Without a principled boundary, moderation becomes a matter of preference.

And preferences are notoriously vulnerable to political pressure.

The Wrong Question

Political debates frequently revolve around which side has become too extreme.

But the more important question is whether the principles guiding either side are true.

A moderate socialist and a revolutionary communist may disagree profoundly about methods, institutions, and the amount of private ownership they would tolerate.

Those disagreements matter.

But wherever they share the premise that collective needs authorize overriding individual property rights, the revolutionary has an opportunity to challenge the moderate's inconsistency.

The moderate must either establish a principled limitation or reconsider the premise.

Simply declaring the revolutionary too extreme settles nothing.

The same standard applies to conservatives, nationalists, religious movements, and every other political philosophy.

No ideology deserves exemption from examining where its principles lead.

Conclusion: Consistency Is a Test, Not a Virtue by Itself

The extremist is not necessarily wrong because he is extreme, and the moderate is not necessarily right because he is moderate.

Both must be judged by the truth of their premises and the consequences of consistently applying them.

Consistency cannot turn a falsehood into truth. But it can expose the falsehoods that moderation conceals.

And sometimes the most revealing thing about an extremist is that he has the courage, or the recklessness, to take seriously what the moderate advocates only halfway.

When you recoil from the logical destination of your own political principles, the intellectually responsible response is to examine the road that led you there.

Because the problem may have begun long before anyone went too far.

"An essential point in the social philosophy of interventionism is the existence of an inexhaustible fund, which can be squeezed forever. The whole system of interventionism collapses when this fountain is drained off: The Santa Claus principle liquidates itself."

~ Ludwig Von Mises from his book Human Action [hat tip Joshua Mawhorter in his article '“Socialism to Me”: Definition by Wishful Thinking']

The Value Congruency Problem

I’ve been working with hundreds of highly rational individuals who expressed a need to find a path to greater self-actualization and expression, which can lead to deeper happiness and higher self-esteem.

I am talking about people who understand that their lives, their aspirations, and their values, manifested through the actualization of their visions, are nothing less than sacred.

But still, many of them are lost without a guide or a standard to define exactly which value pursuits will generate a sense of joy and self-expression and give them the psychological rewards they are after. Most of them have experienced many failed pursuits, resulting in frustration rather than pride, and a sense of “I thought I wanted it, just to realize that I didn’t, or that it didn’t bring me happiness.”

In my Happiness Team Workshops, after we go through an extensive process of defining, validating, organizing, and prioritizing each participant’s “Value Galaxy,” we reach the point where each participant needs to define their “Spotlight Value,” the value that is central to improving their well-being and happiness.

This is one of my first versions of my Value Galaxy

After participants detail the Spotlight Value they want to focus on, be it work-, relationship-, health-, or rejuvenation-related, the team is asked to provide feedback. To my surprise, over several years of running those workshops, in most cases, the team’s reaction has been negative in most cases. In those cases, the feedback was that something was off about the Spotlight Value, and they didn’t truly believe achieving this value would lead the individual in the “hot seat” to optimal levels of self-esteem and happiness.

Here is one concrete example: Barry, a successful lawyer who turned to entrepreneurship, pitched a Spotlight Value focused on launching a new company offering specific security services. He was excited about this opportunity, which meant partnering with a colleague who was an expert in the field. After describing the benefits of pursuing this value, the team gave negative feedback. “I don’t buy that this is what you truly want,” said one participant. “This opportunity doesn’t integrate with everything I know about you so far from your Value Galaxy,” said another.

Barry was flabbergasted. He didn’t understand the feedback, and he couldn’t see the reason for it.

In the next week’s meeting, and after introspecting about the feedback he got, Barry said with teary eyes, “Thank you, guys. I think you just saved me a decade of misguided pursuit that wouldn’t have led to the kind of joy and happiness I am looking for. To be honest, those types of mistakes are what led me to the Happiness Team in the first place.”

What was going on? Why would a smart, successful professional go through a whole process of defining his values only to make the same mistake again?

After much thinking, I’ve come to call this problem: The Value Congruency Problem.

The Congruence of Who I Am and What I Want

The root cause of Barry’s problem was a lack of congruency between his identity and the values he chose to pursue. This is a form of integrity gap between one’s “valuer identity” and the values one chooses to pursue.

Take the character of Howard Roark in Ayn Rand’s “The Fountainhead.” From everything we know about him, it is clear that Roark’s attraction to architecture is fully integrated into his identity and personality. In contrast, Peter Keating is clearly suffering from a lack of integrity which, in his case, is a downstream problem stemming from an inability to value properly.

My point is that given one’s identity or personality, a range of values would fall under the category of high-congruence, while others will clearly fall under the low, or even no-congruence, category. Think of anyone you know well and project the types of work that will fall into the high-congruence and no-congruence ranges. If you offered me a job as a project manager, responsible for making sure every “t” is crossed and every “i” is dotted, I’d get depressed just thinking about it. But if you offer me a job that requires creativity, non-linear thinking, and a healthy dose of chaos, I’d thrive in it.

Here is a visual that helps me concretize this:

Why would some types of work suit me while others don’t? Because of who I am. Because of the combination of my nature and nurture. My temperament, my “hardware”, and the character and the type of valuer I’ve nurtured over the years — my “software.”

Who am I?

Let’s define our terms. What is one’s identity or personality?

According to Cloninger’s Psychobiological Model of Temperament and Character, a personality can be divided into two main categories: Temperament and Character. Temperaments are biological and stable from birth, while Characters are shaped by experience, social growth, and one’s own behavioral and moral decisions. The main value of this model is its recognition of the “Nature & Nurture” aspects of personality. Part is defined by biological characteristics (your “hardware”), and part is the creation of one’s own soul and character through numerous choices (your “software”).

Temperament: It is evident that every child has a specific nature as soon as they come out of their mother’s womb. Even identical twins share the same genetic makeup but do not develop the same personality (see leading research on this topic by Polmin & Daniels). Even in infants, we can observe specific temperament characteristics that distinguish individuals: their activity level, sensitivity and sensory thresholds, intensity, approach vs. withdrawal, adaptability, distractibility, persistence or attention span, regularity, and even overall mood. Although it is hard to infer the exact magnitude of the impact of one’s biological makeup on one’s value choices, it is clear that temperament has an effect on one’s preferences. The takeaway is that we need to identify, recognize, clarify, and distill specific biological tendencies we have, which cannot be reduced further than the statement “This is how I am.”

Achieving full alignment with one’s identity must account for the biological aspects of one’s personality. We all have specific traits, proclivities, and tendencies that are part of our identities and can already be identified in newborns.

Character: Beyond the given “hardware,” most of one’s personality is defined by thousands of conscious and subconscious decisions that accumulate into the cognitive and emotional processes we call character. From a very early age of conceptual thinking, we begin making conscious choices that serve as inputs to an ongoing feedback and programming loop, which defines our character and self-identity. We choose what to focus on, how to react to events, what habits to adopt, what beliefs and principles to subscribe to, and more.

I remember reading a great example about how a decision made by a toddler can affect their self-perception (it was part of an essay called “Happiness Skills” by Edith Packer). The example describes how this toddler processes the fact that a friend he was playing with decided to leave and play with someone else. In his mind, he can regard this incident as proof of his lack of attractiveness, social skills, or character. On the other hand, he can choose to regard this as a mere preference of his friend to do something else, and an opportunity to play by himself or seek another playmate. Regardless of the direction the child chooses, that choice will shape the child’s character and self-esteem.

The sum of this self-evaluation will affect how a person chooses to think and act. “A human being is the most complex entity on earth,” writes Ayn Rand, and this is true by orders of magnitude from every other creature known to us. The level of complexity of a human is hard to grasp, but just like a good writer, we all, either when evaluating others or ourselves, have to essentialize one’s characteristics to be able to reduce them to a graspable whole.

Our character is malleable and could be reshaped in meaningful ways over time. Our free will and our ability to focus and direct our minds toward a specific aspect of our character allow us to identify, evaluate, and consciously change our beliefs, principles of action, habits, and emotional responses. Our free will to choose how we integrate and process experiences, emotionally and cognitively, means we are free to alter our personality at any point in our lives. This means that our personality could change in both major and minor ways.

We all change over time, including our character, our situation, our life stage, the scope of our vision, and our desires. Desires and wants come and go; some diminish over time, some are satiated and lose attractiveness, while others grow and intensify. This means that our character and our desires are moving targets and require constant evaluation, alignment, and adjustment.

But regardless of that fact, one’s character has a specific identity at any given point in time, and one’s ability to achieve happiness and fulfillment depends, in part, on the congruence between one’s personality and the values one chooses to pursue.

Why Look for High Value-Congruence?

How can one ensure that their pursuits will yield self-esteem and happiness? The first step is to prove the nature of value pursuits that actually yield high levels of self-esteem, non-contradictory joy, and a sense of deep happiness and fulfillment.

Deriving from Ayn Rand’s view of values and the art of valuing, it is clear that first and foremost, a value pursuit should be rational and objectively life-serving. This is a prerequisite that I am not going to discuss, and for further reading, I’d refer you to Rand’s book The Virtue of Selfishness.

But to go even deeper into the meaning of a value pursuit’s rationality and objectivity of chosen values, I’d like to put forward a hypothesis:

The psychological benefits derived from pursuing and achieving values depend not only on the rationality and objective worth of those values, but also on their congruence with the individual's personality, authentic interests, desires, and capacities.

The congruence of a value with one’s personality is more likely to generate the desired outcomes for the following reasons:

• Intrinsic pleasure in the process. When a value pursuit is congruent with one's personality, the process itself is rewarding. Howard Roark enjoys doing architecture, solving the problems involved in erecting a building, not merely the finished product.

• Authentic competence and self-esteem. A congruent pursuit allows a person to exercise and develop capacities they personally value. Each genuine achievement can therefore become evidence to oneself: I am capable of doing something that matters to me. This creates a powerful connection between value pursuit, a sense of competence, and earned self-esteem.

• Independent self-evaluation. Deep, authentic values carry a sense of clarity which creates intrinsic, independent standards. When the standards governing a pursuit are one's own, one can judge one's progress internally and independently. Roark can tell a building is good even when others reject it because he applies his own standards.

To summarize, the reasons for seeking high value-congruence are that the level of enjoyment of the pursuit, the level of self-esteem derived from a pursuit, and the sense of independence and fulfillment are all dependent on the congruency of a value to the valuer.

How to Achieve High Value Congruence? Autognosis.

How does one ensure a high level of congruency between their personality and value pursuits?

Well, logically, this means a high level of clarity in the different elements involved: your identity, your values, and your circumstances. Here are the types of questions that can help gain clarity about those three elements:

1. Identity: Who am I? What defines me? What do I know about myself that is true over time? What characteristics do I possess? What are the common threads in my life that reflect the type of person and valuer that I am?

2. Interests and values: what attracts me? What do I find interesting and important? What types of work, relationships, and recreational activities do I find pleasurable and meaningful? Why? What do I genuinely, intrinsically want to achieve? What is a meaningful way to express myself? How can the common denominators of my values reflect on the type of valuer that I am? What brings me pleasure and self-esteem?

3. Circumstances: What is available and possible to me? What constraints do I have? What will be rational or irrational to go after? Which obstacles can I overcome, and which can I not? What can I achieve in the short or long term?

Those are the dimensions one should examine while deciding on which values and life goals to pursue.

As you can see, all of those questions are introspective and require a high level of self-knowledge. Self-knowledge is what Autognosis is all about.

Autognosis is the systematic development of self-knowledge designed to create an alignment between one’s personality and the nature and hierarchy of one’s pursued values. The goal of Autognosis is to increase one’s Value Congruence for the purpose of increasing self-esteem and happiness.

Autognosis is dependent on the fields of philosophy and psychology. A proper philosophy, especially the field of ethics, should guide a person to choose rational and life-serving values in the proper context of his life’s circumstances. A proper psychology should help one evaluate distortions and biases in one’s thinking and emotional habits. The proper use of the insights enabled by Autognosis requires the prerequisite knowledge that one’s chosen values are ethical and aren’t the product of a distorted view of self.

I think that one’s ability to live a deep, meaningful life is directly dependent on one’s level of self-knowledge. This is my case for Autognosis (self-knowledge) as a discipline that should be taught, practiced, and discussed much more than we currently do. This discipline is based on purposeful introspective processes that should inform one’s value choices.

As Ayn Rand writes in her book Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology:

“If men identified introspectively their inner states one tenth as correctly as they identify objective reality, we would be a race of ideal giants. I ascribe ninety-five percent or more of all psychological trouble and personal tragedies to the fact that in the realm of introspection we are on the level where savages were (or lower) in regard to extrospection.”

The 4-Step Autognosis Process

I found that a chronological model for value pursuits is especially effective, as people I’ve worked with are required to go through several cycles of value pursuits to identify gaps and opportunities to optimize their value selections, and even to identify gaps in their psychology that need tending.

My proposed Autognosis model below includes a sequence of definitions, models, questions, answers, and practices that allow individuals to examine the quality and rationality of their chosen value pursuits.

The model includes 4 domains of knowledge, designed to cover the full cycle of:

1. Value Mapping

2. Value Selection

3. Value Pursuit

4. Value Monitoring & Harvesting

A successful model will enable individuals to gain clarity about their nature and identity as a valuer (this word needs to be formally added to the dictionary). It will help them map the potential values and goals they want to achieve and pursue, assess their congruence with their valuer identity, be effective in pursuing those values, and gauge their emotional responses during the pursuit. Lastly, a successful model will also increase clarity on methodologies for extracting the appropriate level and scope of self-esteem from value pursuits.

To learn more about the specifics of every part of this model, you can read my book “Secrets of a Passionate Life” or register for one of my upcoming workshops at taltsfany.com. You can also see this YouTube conversation about Autognosis.