A possible explanation of extremism

Philosophy Forums Religion and Spirituality
1

In a thread started by Bob, the discussion revolved around storytelling as a key to help find understanding of the stories in religious writings. The gist was that in-person story telling brought more than just words to be parsed for meaning. Sometimes it even brought understanding…

With this in mind, it shed light on some of the possible explanations behind the groundswell of religious fundamentalist extremism we’ve experienced in the last several decades.

A good storyteller involves his audience in the story. They become participants, adding their emotions and their life experiences in the acting out and telling of the story. This is communication at it’s best. Its the sort of communication that brings epiphany – if that is possible at all. What started in ancient times as an effective way to communicate, has evolved into the written word, the mass dissemination of books, then radio, television, and finally the internet At each development came greater abstraction from the roots of story telling until today, information and communication is finally anonymous. We are participants in story telling many times removed, and meaning and understanding is also many times removed.

One of the results of this extreme level of abstraction is… well, extremism. Whether it is recognized or just a vague feeling, people are disconnected from heart/mind communication and the stories that help people find answers to “how shall we live?”

So how does this promote extremism? As the level of abstraction increases, people become LOUDER, both mentally and in their acting out. If I am no longer recognized as more than a screen name, I have to shout to be heard. The things I wish to discuss have to be more controversial, full of anything that will attract attention. It keeps me from disappearing completely. So my communication becomes melodrama. Oddly, a version of that ancient story teller is what I seek among the X’s and 0’s of the anonymous internet world.

Such a position invites hard-line ideology. I have to defend my positions because failure means sinking into that amorphous mass of anonymous screen names. I won’t let that happen. So instead of community, I devolve into me against the world.

This perspective could apply to all our social interactions and does if you begin looking at all the forms of extremism we see today. But the wisdom inside the stories of religious texts are lost to “anonymous” who needs strong, simple answers in the face of complexity.

Comments?

2

Exactly, one’s own experience brings more than reading about experience, so the intention of the storyteller is to help us experience the story rather than just hear or read it. As soon as the story is published, it will have needed a very talented writer to expand on the basic storyline so that this experience of the story can take place in us in reading. The problem is, however, that it is one experience restricted to the book as it is published, whereas the bard tells the story hundreds or even thousands of times and it is paradoxically the same and yet different each time.

The problem with fundamentalist extremism is that it takes the restricted experience and recites those words as though there are no others. It doesn’t tell the story but recites the words. The beauty of the Qu’ran must not blind us for the fact that it is the story of Mohammed which can help us understand our own lives, but it is the story of Mohammed. There are many other stories, especially the biblical stories, which are recited in a similar fashion by other fundamentalists, but they are prevented being stories to live by because they are not allowed to breath fresh air, instead the air remains musty and old.

Recital is perfectly OK if we are admiring the beauty of the words and the eloquence of the statements made in a text, as with literature, but when those same words become commands of the most high, any text becomes full of pit-holes. This is something we find in all camps of fundamentalism and curiously they accuse each other of being the devil – which is correct of course. They are serving the accuser and preventing life from blooming. This is what the mythic story enables.

The abstraction also makes the case more and more black and white, them and us, is or isn’t. It promotes fear in those defending positions and in those who these people assume that they are defending against. The internet serves such people of course. I was approximately two weeks guest on a radical catholic forum until I was thrown off for a pretty innocent statement and threatened per eMail for months afterwards. It is easy on the internet and one of its shadows.

The very fact that wisdom is described as playing and dancing (proverbs 8:24) before God has been a reason for fundamentalists to overlook such statements in the Bible. I had been with an evangelical group for over four years before I came across the text and started delving. It became clear then that what I was doing was regarded as frivolous and unbefitting. It became a fascinating discovery to find out how the otherwise sombre texts could writhe with life, albeit very frivolous in the eyes of the pious.

Take Care

3

As a self-professing “extremist” I completely disagree with the thesis.

I’d happily sink into an amorphous mass of screen-names, if they’re all names I like.

To put it in a way that will infuriate the self-righteous defender of contemporary mediocrity (thus securing my title of “extremist”):

If Hell is the England of Dickens and Austen, then consign me to the 7th level of it!

Tentative, if we’re going to use pejorative terms like “extremist” then both you and Bob are the “extremists.” I’m the normal one of the three.

But you see, when looked at in that fashion, it’s no longer trendy to try and self-righteously psychoanalyze that abstracted beast, (AKA: The Crazy Uncle in the Basement; AKA: The Kook; AKA: The Extremist). It becomes a matter of yielding the ideological field to less-popular viewpoints and giving them a measure of legitimacy.

And what bully willingly gives up his pulpit?

No; far better to label the unpopular polemicist with a pejorative term like “extremist” and then marginalize him by pretending he suffers from some sort of normative metaphysical hiccup.

All of us participate in abstract concepts and particular instances of the abstract concepts. The “one” and the “many” are intimate with all men. Even you and Bob. Words have meaning, and that meaning is transmitted to the author’s audience. If anything is “abstracted” … if any emotional impact lost … it’s not on the part of the author, but on the part of the reader, and that is a human problem, not a problem with any particular group of humans (like the mis-understood and oft-attacked “religious fundamentalists.”)

If it weren’t, then why bother writing your post in the first place?

4

I’m not sure that you have understood my position, but as far as the England of Dickens is concerned, his writings show clearly his concern for social reform in a society with blacking-warehouses and child labour in strenuous and often cruel work conditions, “the old grey rats swarming down in the cellars”, “the dirt and decay” which provoked a righteous anger stemming from his own situation and the conditions under which working-class people lived and which became major themes of his works. England then was a kind of hell and all of that time there was a pious snobbery watching over it which was far removed from the spontaneous compassion of Christ. Is that where you would want to be consigned?

Throughout his life, Dickens was a champion of the poor and oppressed, as well as a critic of aristocratic and High-Church elitism. He wrote The Children’s New Testament, a simplified version of the life of Christ, for the instruction of his children but it was never meant for publication. You might also consider that with “A Christmas Carol” Dickens sought to construct Christmas as a family-centred festival of generosity, in contrast to the community-based and church-centred observations. Early experience with Dissenters gave him a lifelong aversion to evangelical zeal, doctrinal disputation and sectarianism. He observed that the church, for all its dogma and ceremony, failed to realize, at least in practice, the need for social action.

Take Care

5

If you want to side with Dickens over and against blind-dogmatism, then fine.

But if you want to make some sort of metaphysical claim that a class of people (known as “extremists”) are victims of a linguistic hiccup, then you’ll have to offer more than smug psychoanalysis.

6

You call a tragedy a “hiccup” - you haven’t understood a thing we’ve been talking about!

Take Care

7

It’s not just a matter of religious extremism.

It’s a matter, as well, of FreeMarketFundamentalism, scientific objectivity, and every other claim to fame some petty power seeking fuck can lay on you.

be yourself

(by never being a disciple.

8

That said, tentative, it appears you are attempting a sincere analyse of how all this works in the context of the Internet.

It certainly is a game changer, isn’t it?

9

@ D6,

“Be yourself, by never being a disciple,”

Should I be your disciple by following the above advice?

If yes, then you refute yourself. If no, then why the suggestion?

@ Bob…

Oh, I’ve got your number. It’s not like your point is original.

Your problem is, you don’t like the emotional dispositions of some people, perhaps those who are stirred toward politically-incorrect courses of action after reading a Kipling poem, or someone who decides to attack progressivist sentiments after reading Scott’s “Ivanho.”

You’d prefer to label those sorts of emotional reactions extreme, and their authors: extremists.

That way you can psychoanalyze them, which is one step away from disenfranchisement.

As I said above: What bully wants to give up his pulpit?

10

It isn’t originality that I’m promoting. In fact, it is the answer to the question I had regarding the nature of scripture and it’s symbolic language which I found in the books of people like Joseph Campbell, Thomas Moore, Karen Armstrong, Lawrence Freeman, Bede Griffiths, Thomas Merton, Alan Watts, Wayne Teasedale, Anthony de Mello, numerous Buddhist authors, Elaine Pagel, Marcus Borg, Bishop Spong and so on. It is the momentary station in life that I’ve reached and the enquiry will probably go on.

I am careful how I use the term extremist and I usually mean a behaviour which infringes on the rights of others in a real way, either by pestering them, shouting them down, threatening violence (including threatening with hell-fire or similar), actually being violent or planning to endanger peoples lives. If you want to put yourself in amongst these people, fine then you are an extremist.

I don’t have the problem you have named, probably because your examples are as ridiculous as what you claim I do. If you want to claim that there is no extremism, well fine. I disagree.

It seems to be the standard course of action that when people are called out for their behaviour, they feel they are being bullied. I didn’t particularly have you in mind at first, but you have lined yourself up with the extremists we were talking about.

Take Care

11

Shotgun,

I’m almost amazed at your response. It’s as if you didn’t read what I said, you only read what you wanted to see. To summarize my ramble: As we move through communication technological evolution, the levels of abstraction increase and the individual voice becomes less and less important. Sensing this, people who have decided they have a message for others abondon calm discourse and resort to “extreme” ploys to gain attention. They become louder in their pronouncements, more confrontational, and ultimately, more rigid in whatever positions they may be espousing. There wasn’t anything profound in what I said, and the examples in social discourse are too obvious to enumerate. One has to look no further that the many pissing contests here in ILP where the participants finally resort to name calling in their attempt to dominate with whatever earth shattering message they are trying to deliver.

I’ve no problem with dissent. I’m an original 60’s hippie who protested and spouted all the idealism of that time. In RL, I’m a known dissenter. Does that make me an extremist? There are ways and then there are ways. That people often disagree is simply the result of different perspectives. But the necessity of using melodrama in order to communicate is the issue I was questioning.

It’s true that I see what could be rationl calm discourse couched in terms of world shaking confrontation as extreme. But what causes this? As Marshall McCluhan observed in the dim dark past: “The medium is the massage.” The internet is the last level of abstraction and becoming anonymous to the point of disappearing is the result. The over-reaction to the threat of becoming anonymous drives the extremism. If you disagree, that’s fine with me. That you have taken umbrage at such a simple observation and see this thread as a personal attack sort of confirms the OP.

12

This is where it breaks down I think. Those people you mention, it seems to me, have already decided that they are willing to go to extremes to have their message heard. Now it may just be the case that they DO have to go to extreams to be heard but that’s not what makes them do it.

One might argue that the internet allows these extremists to more easily get in touch with eachother and orginize themselves more easily… but I don’t think that we’ve evolved with a desire to be heard by strangers, such that when robbed of that we would go out and do crazy shit just to be noticed.

13

Actually, my general point and advice is:

This is what I’ve gathered; steal what you can use.

14

In the case of Christian fundamentalists, they felt that their religion [ many of them deny that it is a religion, but that’s another discussion] was threatened by the establishment. They thought of themselves as the silent moral majority. Roe v. Wade was a turning point. They decided the only way to preserve their belief system and way of life was to take charge of the reins of power which they have been working on ever since. So they had to get active and loud and sometimes resort to violence. From the outside it looks like paranoia, but from the inside the threat is very real. The Internet is just one means to this end for them.

15

Good point, Felix.

But I would also add that it might to do with a something they share with other extreme perspectives such as neo-Nazism, FreeMarketFundalmentalists, and Hard Determinists, despite the clear differences in ideology: a sense of isolation. You see it a lot on these boards.

The problem for extreme positions is that people generally tend to be either moderate or indifferent to the given issue. This tends to isolate the extremist and leads to some common responses. For one, the tendency towards aggression as you point out. It’s almost as if they have to overcome the inherent contradictions, and perhaps a subconscious sense of precariousness, that emerge as extremes overheat by focusing on tearing down the beliefs of those who might oppose them. It may well be that by focusing on the opposing view (of keeping everything outside of them) they are relieved of the possibility of scrutinizing their own perspective in the light of its unpopularity. The other prominent one is the tendency to run in packs. Maybe it’s just me, but they always seem to show up together.

The ironic thing about it is that, seeing it in this sense, what appears, on the surface, to be mere aggression might actually a defensive posture. It’s almost if they feel forced to huddle tightly into the pack as a kind fortification from which they can fire their ideology at others.

Another thing I would point out is that while we believe in things like afterlives, higher powers, and higher principles; our point A to point B is pretty much a given. You have to wonder if they sense the controversial nature of their belief in the face of the comparatively non-controversial nature of existence and seek to overcome the deficiency through a kind of ideological momentum. Maybe they feel the more intensely they argue the more certain it will seem. It may just be a form of overcompensation.

16

d63–According to my experience, fundamentalists often did express a sense of feel isolation. They socially isolate themselves by subscribing to an exclusivist religious belief. The payoff is in the security provided by the certainties of the belief system and the social reinforcement of a highly cohesive church group. The pack behavior you describe is typical. The aggression is defensive…that’s the way it is with paranoid persons. They are defending themselves from perceived threats. The last phenomenon you describe sounds like reaction formation. In psychoanalytic theory, reaction formation is a defensive process (defense mechanism) in which anxiety-producing or unacceptable emotions and impulses are mastered by exaggeration of the directly opposing tendency. [Wikipedia] I think that reaction formation is a plausible explanation for a lot of extremist behaivor.

17

Clearly, we’re on the same page. I’ll have to check into reaction formation. It would be nice to have empirical backing for what I arrived at through deduction.

That said, just a short digression that requires a short answer:

That quote from Solaris, was it only in the Soderberg version? Or was it also in Tarkovsky’s? Sounds like something that would have come from the book.

18

I haven’t read the book. I got the quote from the movie and suspect it is from the novel as it was the most profound line in the movie IMO.

19

Yes, but from which version? Tarkovsky’s, Sodenberg’s, or both?

I ask because you’re right, it is profound.

20

Soderberg’s. I haven’t seen the first movie. The one I saw botched the story with an unambiguous ending that contradicts the quote. But I got the author’s idea, I think.