In the vast, cluttered ecosystem of belief, most people thrive in the middle.

They find a comfortable rock, perhaps a little dull but exceedingly safe,

and they settle down to worry about mundane things, like the price of cheese

and whether the correct recycling bin was used for that empty plastic bottle.

This center is a wide place, a lukewarm bath of compromises and shrugged shoulders,

where the prevailing philosophy is that things aren’t perfect, but they’ll probably suffice.

But then there are the margins, the extreme edges where the light grows dim,

where the air gets thin and the reasoning often seems even thinner.

These are the haunts of the “ists,” a colorful band of theoretical misfits

who looked at the boring, stable center and thought, “Absolutely not for me.”

They are the people who feel that if they aren’t shouting something entirely unreasonable,

their voices are as lost as a whisper inside a malfunctioning feedback loop.

To be an ordinary activist is often seen as noble, if slightly tiring;

you hold a sign, you sign a petition, you have very firm opinions on plastic straws.

But for the standard “ist,” this is child’s play, a tepid performance.

No, they must be something singular, something alarming and quite inconvenient,

something that makes people say, “Look over there, should we be doing something about that?”

Take the ardent Secessionist, who lives in a suburban cul-de-sac.

He has had quite enough of the federal tax code and the tyranny of zoning laws.

He believes the only path forward is for his three-bedroom split-level home

to formally declare its independent sovereignty from the surrounding state.

He plans to print his own currency using a bubble-jet printer

and will enforce strict border control on anyone attempting to use his driveway,

totally ignoring the critical problem that his independent nation has no water supply

that isn’t currently owned and operated by the very county he just seceded from.

Then we encounter the profound Nativist of the United States.

This is a person who deeply believes in the sanctity of “the first ones here,”

while standing firmly on land that was stolen by several different Empires.

He looks at anyone who arrived five minutes later than his own great-grandparents

as a suspicious, culture-diluting interloper who needs to be sent packing.

His grasp of history is remarkably efficient, conveniently airbrushing out

the fact that he himself is not, technically, native to anything west of Scotland,

and that the actual natives would probably like a word about his use of “native.”

This leads us directly to the Nihilist, the most tiring person at the party.

He has decided that nothing—absolutely not one single thing—matters at all.

He is against government, morality, parking tickets, and your choice of appetizer.

Yet, for someone convinced of existence’s fundamental lack of point,

he sure has a lot to say about it, at length, and always with a sigh,

and he is strangely specific about demanding a very high quality of coffee

for someone who believes the concept of flavor is just a capitalist construct.

The Anarchist, perhaps, has more energy, if not more organizational capacity.

He wants to burn down all structures and systems of oppressive control,

usually by organizing a very structured committee, with designated sub-groups,

to decide exactly when and how the non-structure of anarchy will be enforced.

He is against rules, except for the very strict rules governing his Anarchist Book Club,

and will absolutely lose his mind if you don’t use a coaster for your drink,

as he values the aesthetic integrity of his coffee table far more than he values,

say, a functioning transportation department or a legal system that isn’t chaos.

In contrast, the Fundamentalist seeks total rule, though usually ancient ones.

He will find a very old book, pick three sentences he likes, and ignore the other thousand,

and then build an entire political and moral philosophy on those three phrases.

He is convinced that everyone must behave exactly as the chosen text demands,

which usually involves giving up things that are fun and wearing uncomfortable clothes,

all while forgetting that the text also said, in a different section he skipped,

to be nice to his neighbor, and not, for instance, judge them harshly.

The Elitist thinks you shouldn’t have been invited in the first place.

He believes the world should be run by the “smartest,” by which he means “himself,”

while he struggles, visibly and repeatedly, to figure out how to work

the QR-code menu at a restaurant or program the new remote for his television.

He assumes that his inability to use simple modern technology is a design flaw,

rather than evidence that his superior intellect might have some significant blind spots.

And he is firmly convinced that the only people who really know what is good for you

are the people who have never actually spoken to you or had to pay a bill.

Then we get to the groups that are less funny and considerably more concerning.

The Supremacist, who has concluded that because he possesses a specific hair color,

or eye shape, or was born on the correct side of a river, he is inherently better.

This is a person whose primary achievement in life is simply being,

yet he believes this accident of biology gives him a mandate to dominate.

His philosophy is essentially, “I am better than you because I am me, and also because my great-great-grandfather happened to be better than yours, so please sit down and do what I say while I attempt to tie my own shoelaces.”

The Fascist likes uniforms and matching hats and really loves being in charge.

He feels the only problem with the country is that people have too many options.

He envisions a perfect, unified society where everyone is exactly identical,

except for him, who gets to be the special snowflake directing traffic.

It’s a bold vision of total order, until you realize he can’t even coordinate

which color polo shirt the regional subgroup should wear to the next rally,

and that the concept of a dictatorship actually requires some management skills.

We must also mention the Terrorist and the Vigilantist, though cautiously.

One has decided that the only proper form of debate is a loud explosion,

a truly remarkable way of ensuring people really listen to your point,

if only long enough to try and run in the opposite direction from where you are.

The other, the Vigilantist, has decided the entire police force is incompetent

and will now enforce justice by patrolling the neighborhood in a minivan,

handing out severe warnings to children who skateboard on the sidewalk,

and deeply alarming everyone else with how enthusiastic they are about hand-to-hand combat.

We find these people living on the very, very fringe, like mold on bread.

And the great majority of the world, eating the safe, slightly boring center,

usually finds it exceedingly easy to just ignore them, which is the whole problem.

They are so loud, so confused, and so bad at organizing their own societies

that it’s tempting to assume they are entirely harmless and can be dismissed.

But it is perhaps wise to remember that while their ideas are utterly insane,

the passion and the willingness to do something terrible are very, very real.

It is true that they aren’t the brightest bulbs in the ideological shop.

They are the people who will buy a tiger because they think it makes them brave,

without ever stopping to consider that the tiger doesn’t care about their ideology,

and that it is going to get hungry, and that they themselves are made of meat.

They may not have any idea how the world actually works, it’s true.

But they definitely know how to break it, which is much, much easier.

So while we should probably ignore their logic, which is a Swiss cheese of reason,

we should never entirely ignore the possibility that they might,

if we leave them alone long enough in the dark on the edges of the room,

accidentally build a tiger-shaped explosive and set the whole place on fire.