Fundamentalism

I am a fundamentalist.

I believe in the fundamental physicality of the human condition.

I believe we are mammals, animals.

I believe we have basic physical needs for and rights to nutrition, safe housing, cleanliness, sex, love, acceptance, community.

I believe it is right to love one another, to promote peace and to share what we have with each other.

I believe it is wrong to intentionally harm, to kill, to rape, to steal and to promote disharmony by selfishly ignoring the needs of one another in a shared society.

I am a fundamentalist. What are you?

Commonality

In a recent group discussion about forgiveness, the consensus seemed to be that reaching some sense of commonality with the person who offends helps when trying to forgive that person. One member of the discussion spoke of trying to summon forgiveness for a person who had committed atrocities against many human beings. This was a hard case.

The ultimate commonality which we all share with all other beings is our mortality. I have begun to incorporate a more present consciousness of this reality in my daily practice of being. For example, when confronted with an insect in my kitchen, I struggle with the impulse to kill it. I think of the parallel between its life and my own. I question whether my ability to kill it easily is a justification for killing it. I consider that the minor violence of killing the insect brings me closer to committing future violence. If the insect poses a real threat to my own immediate well being, I may kill it. Otherwise, I will attempt to remove it without fatally harming it.

I am not a Jain, but I understand the Janist approach to defeating the impulse to violence in our animal brains. The building of patterns of behavior in daily life leads to the growth of the human condition, individually or societally. By remembering the precious brevity of all life, I find that the impulse to anger and violence is much more easily managed. Getting to the awareness and acceptance that we al die all too soon is a challenge in a world of electronic avatars and fundamentalist religions, which promote an illusion of immortality.

Brimstone

I was watching television coverage of devastation from tornadoes in the Bible Belt today. I wondered what these hypr-religious Southerners think about their vengeful God and their status with Him when these things happened over and over to them. After all, this is the same God they believe will smite homosexuals and anyone else whom they deem unredeemable. Well, having been so smitten themselves, do they even try to put all that together? I guess, if they were that intellectually curious and mature, they wouldn't have believed in that God in the first place.

FundaMENTALism

The fundamentally and dogmatically religious are, by definition, intellectually afraid. They are not stupid. They simply are not adult learners or questioners, those human beings who are never satisfied with one simple answer.

The source of this fear could be poor socialization, conditioned dread of change. a genetic predisposition to paranoia or xenophobia, or other dysfunctional personality traits. The primitive human ego externalizes fears and projects them onto 'the outsiders', those outside the comfortable, conditioned or adopted belief system.

Compassion for these individuals can be a challenge for a person in evolutionary practice, since the fundamentalist of any belief system purposely, out of defensiveness, places himself in aggressive opposition to anyone who challenges his fundamentalism. Aggression is a natural defense of the primitive and fearful. The fundamentalist is an expert in fear. He uses it as his natural weapon and defense. The current U.S. government is controlled by these fundamentalists. They fear loss of control of wealth, oil, power. The Muslim jihadists are afraid of loss of control of land, their oil, their women and their wealth.

Mindful interaction with fundamentalists must be based in this understanding of them. Anger is always counterproductive and especially so with fundamentalists and growling dogs. The practitioner of peaceful human evolution can avoid their aggression by distance, silence, kindness, education or any other skill. However, to expect any result outside oneself in practice is folly. So, caution and wisdom are best observed when dealing with the fearfully religious.

I focus on my practice, not on the obstacles to my practice.

Redemption

The truly stupid cannot be redeemed. Intelligence and information redeem the human mind and spirit from its greatest disease and greatest evil, stupidity. I was reminded of this today when I heard interviews of members of a fanatical Christian sect in Colorado. It seems their shepherd, a Svengali named Haggard, was buying drugs from and having sex with a gay male prostitute, while preaching intolerance to ignorant bigots on the weekends. It was, after all, a good living. He even got invited to help President Bush with his own stellar ministry of hate and destruction. The interviewed members of Haggard's church (money machine) refused to believe that the story was true, even after the lying Haggard went from an outright denial to gradual revelations of his guilt of the charges. I'm sure it will get even more entertaining. It's a basic 'my-shit-doesn't-stink' story. Glass houses abound out there, especially in Middle America. So do stone throwers. And, apparently, so do Tina queens. Redemption from stupidity begins with the acknowledgement of it. Unfortunately, it takes quite an education to learn just how stupid you are. Perhaps today even you would agree, Mr. Haggard.