Aristotle I: "Balance"

I told you I'd come back to this topic.

I really, really hate how people use the word 'balance' as a pretense for pragmatism (when it's decidedly not pragmatic, "Our country uses 60 Hz current, our country uses 120 Hz--let's compromise and use 80, that's pragmatic!") and thereby a rationalization for pretty much any action.   Yet, despite I find other "intellectually immature" (did I ever mention that I think someone should make a T-shirt that says, "I am a member of a moronic cult"?  I'm sick of people throwing around that ad hominem...except, of course, when I do it :p.) people who agree with me, try searching around for "criticisms of the Aristotelian Mean".  They are actually suspiciously rare.  So, I will do so here.

One obvious theoretical criticism is that the Aristotelian Mean presents a false dichotomy in the sense that there is a "scale", and only between two extremes, of two different values (as the old joke goes, Congress usually compromises--somewhere between stupid and evil).  The other criticism is that it feels like a straw man.  After all, the name-calling argument is that we shouldn't be "extreme".  Why not?  Is it suddenly considered reprehensible to endeavor to be as consistent as you can be?  Is it suddenly reprehensible to actually have some damn principles?  (see what I did there?  I criticized the Golden Mean for being a straw man, and then in the very next few sentences I presented a straw man.  Either way, I hope the reader understands what I am at least getting at here)

It is, really, just a thinly veiled disguise of false compromise.  Usually performed by individuals who feel that "everything is relative", and are afraid of upsetting anyone (although, really, if you wanted to make sure not to upset anyone, you wouldn't talk at all).

Yet what I find even more troubling is how, essentially, such a typically emotionally acceptable theory (due to its social acceptability because, as I said, it doesn't "rock the boat") unusually forms a solid of Aristotelian ethics.  I've heard plenty of criticisms of Aristotelian ethics, but unfortunately, I don't think this has really been focused on by any other source, so I supposed that I might as well go ahead and do this here.

Next I'll go into my thoughts w.r.t. Aristotle on "Happiness".