Modernity's Jock Itch: Fundamentalism
Why are some people such jerks?
Or, to borrow from our British cousins, so disagreeable?
I mean "disagreeable" in the most expansive way possible. I'm talking boors and bastards, cretins and creeps, every person labeled with a derogatory term derived from the nethers of the human anatomy.
Why did early activists in the Protestant Reformation defecate in holy water fonts and urinate on beautiful altars?
Why were the Puritans such savage jerk-offs that Roger Williams preferred to take his chances with the savage Indians?
Why did the Soviets send people to the Gulag for making jokes?
Why do extremist Muslims smash irreplaceable masterpieces of sculptures and architecture?
Why are Q-Anoners, Antifa and BLM rioters, college professors in tweed jackets, and that guy with a strong opinion on everything so annoying?
Why was Ayn Rand Ayn Rand?
Answer: They're all fundamentalists.
A balanced person can hold two contradictory thoughts in his mind, and if he can’t reconcile the contradiction, he accepts both truths anyway. Paradox doesn’t suck the wind out of his soul.
Not fundamentalists. They don't acknowledge the contradictory truths, much less try to reconcile them, and they sure as heck don't accept them.
Fundamentalists know there are good things and bad things, good guys and bad guys. Help the good things, help the good guys. Hurt the bad things, hurt the bad guys.
It’s a left-hemisphere thing. Fundamentalism seeps from the left hemisphere like jock itch mosses on a football player who has only one change of underwear.
The left hemisphere needs certainty. It can't allow "paralysis by analysis." It needs to assess and act with conviction.
This need to act inclines it toward fundamentalist thinking: "That's good; I'll pursue it. That's bad; I'll kill it."
Fundamentalists tend to share their insights, often loudly, which is why you can often hear these Dunning-Kruger dictionary entry exhibits talking from across the restaurant. If more people hear their opinions and don’t challenge them, it further caulks the cocoon of their rationalized world.
This mental jock itch is a modern spectrum disorder and we’re all on it.
Most of us aren't clawing away in full view like that jackass at the bar after a few drinks, but we all feel the itch occasionally.
If you find yourself forming a strong opinion on something, even something as inconsequential as Taylor Swift, close your eyes, breathe softly, and whisper to yourself, “F____ what you think.”
It's a vulgar mantra for a vulgar culture. If you prefer, you can try a modern equivalent of medieval flagellating by punching yourself in the groin as a reminder. Sure, it’s painful, but at least you’re not inflicting the pain on the rest of us.