The Middle Way, Part 4 (Fanatics vs. Fundamentalism)

Lou Marinoff makes an excellent distinction between fanatics and fundamentalists that all too many people do not make. We typically refer to Osama bin Laden as an Islamic fundamentalist, which groups him in with various Chrstian fundamentalists such as Pat Robertson. However, "It is primarily religious (and also political) fanatics who cannot tolerate beliefs that differ from their own. Fanatics are dangerously and sometimes violently intolerant of others' beliefs, while fundamentalists are passionately wed to their own beliefs but normally pose no threat to others who believe differently" (63). Having been rasied around -- and as -- a Christian fundamentalist, I can attest to this difference. I heard my pastor and my family complain voiciferously and constatntly about people doing this or that, or belieivng this or that. But the worst that any of them were ever going to do was sign a petition or vote for or against something. In the end, they were actually tolderant of the things they opposed, because they lived and let live. That did not mean, though, that they did not think they did not have the right to voice their opinions.

And this gets me to another point that needs to be made. Fanatics cannot stand for someone to disagree with them. Thus, they take action to silence their opposition thorugh various forms of intimidation. There are people out there who are free speech fanatics -- meaning, they think that they should have the right to say anything they want without anyone saying anything to or about them or their ideas. The attitude can be summed up thus:

Fanatic: "I believe that we should do X."
Opposition: "No, I think X is a bad idea."
Fanatic: "Opposition is infringing on my freedom of speech to say that we should do X!"

Pick your favorite cause and plug it into X, and you have probably heard someone make the above argument. It is not enough that they are free to say what they want, but others should not be free to criticize them for having said it. That is a form of fanaticism that in fact undermines the freedom of speech.

So fanaticism does not have to be theological in nature. But I do suspect that it is always religious in nature. Marinoff hints at this in the paragraph that ends the short section the above was excerpted from when he says, "Religious reform itself has now reached the other extreme [away from fundamentalism] in the West, whose societies -- from South America to North America to Europe -- hve become so liberalized that millions now have no religious faith whatsoever. This leaves them extremely vulnerable to moral anarchy on the one hand, and to political crusades on the other" (63). In other words, it has led to post-hippy, postmodern anarchy and libertinage -- or to various forms of secular-government religions such as national socialism, fascism, and communism. For many government is now their god. We saw this particularly strongly among the existentialists who, upon embracing atheism, became supporters of Naziism (Heidegger was a lifelong member and never recanted his membership in the party) and communism (Camus, de Beauvoir, and Sartre were all communists, at least for a while). Nietzsche warned against this, pointing out that people did not truly embrace atheism and all that it truly meant, but that they continued to act as good Christians or Jews, only transfering their loyalties to other entities.

What we seem to see now in the United States is a combination of moral anarchy and devotion to government as god among a certain element of the Left. There are people who don't want anyone to judge them for anything they do, but at the same time support the creation of an extremely large, controlling government. They seek to cut all natural social bonds, eliminate all natural social hierarchies, and support the government as the one, true and only social organizer. It's a very unnatural top-down yet egalitarian system. But it is a system conceived of by people who, to paraphrase Nietzsche, cannot conceive of a being greater than themselves. They naturally imagine themselves in charge of the very entity they worship.

WIth a natural set of social systems, we see decentralization and moderation at work. People join various social systems -- churches, neighborhoods, jobs, clubs, etc. -- and there is a natural hierarchy that forms. There is me, and I am in a family, and my family and I are in a neighborhood and go to a church, and each of those are imbeded in a hierarchical organization themselves: the community is in a town, in a county (two in the case of my town) in a state in a nation in a larger culture (the West) in a globalized world; the church is a member of a diocese, etc. As a member of diffferent groups, I am forced to get along with different people. There are people of different ethnic groups in my neighborhood and in my church (and in my family, actually), etc. I am friends with people of different religions and ethnicities due to the different organizations I have been a member of, or because of the places I hang out at. All of which contributes to moderate behavior (it's hard to hate people you know very well, after all). We live moderate lives by acting as we naturally act -- as social mammals -- while struggling against the unfortunate side-effect of evolving as a social mammal, which is hatred of those not in our tribe. We do this not by eliminating social behavior, but by expanding our notion of who is in our tribe. But all of this undermines government-fanaticism, and that is why anti-social efforts have been underway of late: anti-touching rules and even laws, etc. are becoming popular of late. It is part of a kind of fanaticism we have to fight against just as much as we fight against religious fanaticism.

But we have to remember: fanaticism and fundamentalism are not one and the same thing. We have to know that if we are going to fight effectively against fanaticism and make the world safe for moderation.