The comedian and actor John Cleese has an interesting take on extremism, arguing that what some people see as extremism in those they perceive as enemies can often be used to justify their own equally extremist reactions to it. “You can be as nasty as you like and feel your behaviour is morally justified”. 

In other words, extremism begets extremism – it’s just that our own certainty that we are right and ‘they’ are wrong risks blinding us to the fact our own behaviour is no less extreme.

Extremist ideology of whatever nature blooms in closed networks of ideological echo chambers (like internet chatrooms, s...

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In 1939, the New Yorker published a short story titled The Secret Life of Walter Mitty. Written by James Thurber, the partially autobiographical story and the expanded novel that followed three years later introduced readers to a meek and unassuming man with a wild fantasy life.

If you’re unfamiliar with the story (film versions have starred Danny Kaye and Ben Stiller), you’ll find no spoilers here. But it’s enough to say that Walter has what might be best described as an incidental relationship with reality.

During rare lucid moments when reality does intrude on Walter’s overpowering fantasy life (he believes himself to be, among other things, a wartime pilot, an emergency-room surgeon, and a louche killer), he is confronted by a world he doesn...

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