A PERSPECTIVE ON FANATICISM

Mick(Mrigank) Das 

The battle between Absolutism and Relativism in the modern world has put us in a conflicted state where Fanaticism has prevailed instead. Fanaticism is typically (and perhaps rightfully) associated by the mainstream populace as having a nexus with major religions and an extreme and deranged form of Absolutism. Dogmatic faith and the zealous assumption that only the faith that one is embroiled in should be unquestionably accepted by others or they ought to be the object of punitive measures has left the world in a sad and vulnerable state to the acts of terror, that seem to be coming at a much more frenetic pace chronologically. The counter to Fanaticism is Relativism - where we just pander to a middle of the road position of accommodation and aversion to any top-down axiomatic principles of moral philosophy and faith.
 Relativism encourages the discarding of mainstream religion deeming it as a ultra-conservative right wing position that strips away an individual's prerogative to be the moral arbiter of their own lives and the lives of those around them and also their intellectual ability to philosophize the overall approach to the passage of life. However Relativism does allow for moral depravity - whether it is in music, culture, the predominance of stimulants, the relaxation of the rules of marriage and promiscuous behavior. This angers the opposite side that favors Absolutism which looks at trends in sexual orientation, drug use and permissive social norms (among others) as signs of the decadence of society arising from the liberalism that follows hand in glove with Relativism. The result is an incessant and increasingly turbulent edge of friction from which is borne fanaticism, radical behavior and the sinister and chilling birth of terror which is perceived by Absolutionists as the only way to redress the balance that they deem to be intolerable and a bane to their ability to subjugate or coerce compliance of their particular form of religion on their family and community.
 However Absolutism doesn't have an universally harmonizing principle so far - as evidenced by the tension between the world's major religions. Do we have a good answer yet? No. However it seems like if there is a non-atheistic universal harmonizing principle that favors the cause of Absolutism it cannot be something that professes acts of terror as the means of redressal. Neither is it a fire-and-brimstone or excoriating approach that uses barbaric means to cultivate adherents - that seems to be the antithesis of a harmonizing principle that ought to be aligned around the discovery of transcendence in a non-permanent passage of life, that frequently asks us to deal with affliction.  It has to be a non-peurile, stabilizing, substantive harmonizing principle based on logic and scientific reasoning. It has to teach us that there is something in us that death cannot touch, that has an eternal quality and has a journey that aligns it with some universal power that loves and cares for us. The chicken-and-egg problem is if there exists such an harmonizing principle, driving someone from a position of adversary to adherent requires sometimes an approach that may not be very pleasant, palatable and warm and comfy at first. The key for a discerning individual is to recognize the true north of a harmonizing principle as different from fanaticism even as the bonafide preachers for both may compete for your attention in a rather similar manner.