Extremes and Balance

So lately I've been more than a little disturbed by the levels of extremes I see in the world around me. There doesn't seem to be a whole lot of middle ground, or gray area, just extremes on every side. I just read a great op-ed piece in the New York Times by Thomas Friedman who also pointed this out. I wonder what's happening that people seem inclined to want to see the world in black and white. I've never cared much for opposite extremes myself. The edges of ideas always feel slight and narrow whereas the convoluted and oft confusing space in between feels deep, vast, and perhaps even overwhelming but at least it isn't shallow. Here in the real muck of middle lives the possibility that I could learn something more or discover something different and as a result, maybe even change the way I see the world. Now I don't think I'm delusional, I don't think everyone should agree, in fact quite the opposite. I think we should disagree, we should see things from different perspectives, we should understand that we don't understand. But we don't do that with any real integrity when we haul our ego's out to the edges of issues and ideas. As a result, I'm a little obsessed with the idea of balance, not that it's achieved but that its sought after...that we may actually be patient, intelligent, and conscientious enough to keep digging through the quagmire that is complexity and obscurity to find, at a minimum, something real.