Let’s talk about fundamentalism, also called fascism, so often associated with the right. It is no stranger to the left. I write about this in my book Back to the Ethic; Reclaiming Western Values.
“Beware of letting your heart be seduced; if you go astray, serve other gods and bow down to them . . . you will quickly perish”? (Deuteronomy 11:16–17).
Here is an excerpt from the 1880 novel The Brothers Karamazov by the Russian author, Dostoyevsky that is in my book. He writes about the burden of freedom in his parable “The Grand Inquisitor.”
In the story, Jesus comes to Seville, Spain, in the late-fifteenth century, at the time of the Spanish Inquisition. He is taken prisoner by the Grand Inquisitor and questioned.
The Grand Inquisitor tells Jesus that humanity is too weak to bear the gift of freedom. It does not seek freedom but bread—not the divine bread promised by Jesus, but ordinary earthly bread. People will worship whoever gives them bread, for they need their rulers to be gods. The Grand Inquisitor tells Jesus that his teaching has been amended to deal with humanity as it really is: “We have corrected Thy work and have founded it on miracle, mystery and authority. And men rejoiced that they were again led like sheep, and that the terrible gift that brought them such suffering was, at last, lifted from their hearts.”
Fundamentalism thrives on this need for authority, a type of idol worship that encourages submission rather than freedom. And fear is the biggest component of fundamentalism which opens the door to governments that speak to our innate fear of freedom and a desire to go back to the Garden, or back to the womb, where all of our needs were taken care of, where we need not make any decisions.
And this can lead to oversized government. Government that treats us like children. Government that promises to take care of us from cradle to grave. Governments that tell us what we will eat, what we will learn, what we will believe, what is politically appropriate and correct. Governments that act as if one size fits all.
It is time we wake up and take back our free-will and our freedom including the freedom and need to fail. It is time to grow up and make our children grow up, leave the cocoon of arrested development, so they can function in a world of differing opinions, a world that is neither fair nor rosy all the time.
Most importantly today we must take back our education from the government and demand that critical thinking return to institutions of learning because there are different opinions in this world and they require respectful hearing so that we can compare and contrast different views.
The destruction to our society is coming from the very institutions that are meant to teach tolerance and respect; from our governments and our universities where hubristic fire has squashed freedom of speech in the name of freedom.
"And men rejoiced that they were again led like sheep, and that the terrible gift that brought them such suffering was, at last, lifted from their hearts.
