RDH - Are Fundamentalists Fundamentally Silly?

Are Fundamentalists Fundamentally Silly?

February 2, 2007

Fundamentalists—those people who take a holier than thou approach to spirituality—are no more than the vanguard in the latest war against the excesses of human life.

The story is always the same. A lot of us are just plain vulgar, not afraid to show a little skin now and then, or to look at it when it pleases us. Others like to drink alcohol or to smoke cigarettes or marijuana. Still others just want a really nice apartment in the most commercial and upscale part of the city, a place to watch high-definition television or to curl up with a book over a nice latté.

"Mr. Harper, you seem to be picking on Islamism, or, in other words, the political manifestation of Islamic fundamentalism." Not exactly. It should be clear that I am focusing on a particular manifestation of the universal and perfectly natural tendency toward fundamentalism by those who feel cast out from life's feast.

There are times and places where these desires—for human contact, sensual or gustatory pleasure, or the stimulation of the higher faculties—seem to be perfectly reasonable or even laudatory.

But then there are times when it seems all wrong, and the funny thing is that it's all a matter of perspective. The best apartments in New York or San Francisco, after all, are enjoyed mainly by rich Americans or rich expatriates from places like France, Japan, or England or Denmark or Russia. From their perspective, things are pretty nice. The world seems cosmopolitan and welcoming. Take-out is always just around the corner. But what do you do if you're not rich or you don't see yourself as some sort of modern, urban, intelligent, or even glib person who, with equal adroitness, can walk down the street with a hot cup of coffee or use chopsticks to fetch mouthfuls of Chinese American cuisine out of a box while watching a critically acclaimed film on DVD?

The answer to what you might do if you're left out of the picture is twofold. First—and this feeling is universal—there will be a near-frantic desire to retreat from the present-day world. Second, there may be a desire to destroy those who are perceived as either enjoying or abusing the fruits of mankind's material and intellectual conquest, respectively, of nature and mystery.

Of course even many Americans have been left out of the picture. Many of us, however, can be placated by the fact that the price of electronics always falls, thanks to the reliable obsolescence that is the well-known corollary to Moore's Law. Can't afford to buy PlayStation 3? No matter, you'll be able to afford it in a year or two. For now, you can certainly get some additional mileage out of your older game console, not to mention your handhelds.

And among those Americans who are all too aware of where they stand—and who manage to escape incarceration for their furtive, illegal attempts to grab a piece of the glory—many will be able to cling to the hope of social promotion that remains one of the cornerstones of the American myth.

And then there's always religion—that last port in the storm for so many of us. But for most Americans, religion remains a mild palliative at best. America has gone through its own eras of fundamentalist zeal, but right now the living's too easy for even most of the poor—the majority of whom tend to be overweight owners of at least one light truck, as I hope I've made abundantly clear elsewhere.

In a place like the Middle East, of course, the situation's a lot different. According to the major American newspapers, everything's just plain horrible right now if you happen to be the typical Middle East resident. Not only are you more than likely not able to consider eating great late at Wendy's even if you wanted to, but worse, there's the specter of an independent Israel in your midst—modern, independent Israel, with its popular cafés and nightclubs and all the things that go along with the triumph of modernity.

Worse still, many of your own leaders are the Westernized byproducts of decades or even centuries of colonial "interest" in your land (think Saudi Arabia).

So the fundamentalist response makes a lot of sense. If, for example, flirtation in a popular coed café is off-limits to you, then it should be off-limits to everyone, and as anyone who's seen the news over the last ten years can tell you, quite a few popular cafés have turned into bloodbaths for a day. Jealousy is one of the strongest and least attractive of human emotions.

A note on fundamentalist certainty. It is one of the paradoxes of religion that it requires a belief in the unknown. Does a religious person really know something that a secular person does not? Of course not. It is, however, enough to think that you do. Therein lies the magic or the madness, depending on where you happen to be standing.

Now for a word about religious proscriptions. Most of these prohibitions or restrictions or provisions and limitations date from an earlier time, when it was more dangerous to indulge oneself in carnal pleasures. For one thing, the infant and maternal mortality rates were many times higher back when Muhammad or Jesus was supposedly around. So it made extra sense to insist, for example, that sexually mature women cover up their bodies and that men leave childhood behind without a particularly sensitive part of their anatomy. Anything to forestall lust and its potentially horrific consequences . . .

Now for the usual disclaimer. It is, of course, beyond the scope of this essay to get into the etiology of the many fascinating restrictions dictated by some of the major religious texts—the ones on alcohol and blue jeans and the novels of Henry James, for example. But I hope it is clear that even to entertain the idea, in a moment of frustration, that fundamentalist impulses are silly or childish is just plain unfair. Fundamentalists, annoying and pushy as they tend to be, provide a necessary check to the excesses of lived existence and a reminder that, someday, we all must give up our favorite things. (Unless, of course, the afterlife—which, to be fair, remains unknown to us all, notwithstanding vehement but self-interested claims by some people to the contrary—turns out to be modeled on the earthly notion of material wealth. Anything's possible.)