Extremism's Destructive Course
Extremism, rigid ideologies or religious fundamentalism take the humanity out of human beings, leaving them devoid of all the humane impulses buried deep in our subconscious and which make us human. Simply because the surety of belief requires the sublimation of those very human characteristics that would lead us to sympathy, empathy, compassion toward others unconstrained by that deep and ingrained belief there there is one certain way and all else is dross.With a strident ideology that pushes and shoves and insists its adherents sacrifice all toward an end no sacrifice is too great to accomplish. In the instance of the kind of Utopian communality that led to Communism which became a dystopian political ideology, the cudgels of rigid compulsion led to the Gulag, elsewhere to killing fields, and certainly to the sacrifice of millions of lives to achieve the desired, yet elusive purpose.
Communism's aim was to obliterate the evil stench of Capitalism, for the gentler and kinder egalitarian state where each was expected to deliver unto the state that which he was capable of producing, and in turn would be guaranteed an equality of existence based on the state's output and income. The doctor would receive an income commensurate with that of the truck driver, each equal to the other. One as purposeful and valuable to society as the other.
There was a nobility of purpose in purporting to 'free' people from the shackles of religion, but then its proponents became intolerant of religion. It made some kind of good sense to attempt to produce a society where all would be cared for and valued equally for what they were able, individually and collectively (although the individual was subsumed by the collective) to produce to enhance the community at large.
But then dissent and dissatisfaction growing out of rigidly enforced collaboration brought its anti-human punishments. People don't often work well collectively, they lack incentive when there is no personal reward at the end of their work shift. Those individuals whose personal acumen, intelligence and ambition lead them to excellence in production will invariably resent those who lack all the attributes that that they possess, and whose production is drone-like and inadequate but whose recompense equals theirs.
When the collective agrarian reform failed, the inevitable result was the state incapacity to feed its hungry hordes. Millions of peasants were casually relegated to the condition of slow starvation. When those among the population who were considered middle class in origin and intellectual in class became an irritant to the ruling Communist elite they became expendable as living creatures and another sacrifice to the great experiment.
Those who criticize and who opt for a different way of life are set aside as bad examples for the larger community, ostracized, exiled and forced to labour under inhumane conditions in a life-sapping environment. That's the Gulag. Killing camps such as those that existed in Cambodia just extinguish dissent summarily. In Cuba dissent is not tolerated, and truth is subverted to the greater cause; the advance of peoples' ambitions denied.
Some portions of the great experiment succeed in producing larger numbers of educated professionals, which avails them nothing personally, for they become nothing less than functionaries of society. This kind of society cannot advance economically because it deliberately turns its back on free-market economics and anything remotely resembling capitalism and free-will.
China experienced its great social and cultural revolution by turning its citizens against and then upon one another, cherishing nothing but the great cultural revolution, handily sacrificing everything to its attainment. From a society that revered ancient wisdom and a culture of ancestor worship, it turned into a revolutionary intellectual and cultural desert, leaving millions of corpses in its wake.
In Germany's era of the National Socialist Party the ideology's foundation of fascism was based on the nationalistic dream of superiority, exceptionality, entitlement and world conquest based on all of those imagined traits. Dissenters were speedily rounded up, sent to concentration camps and either held in impoverished conditions or murdered.
The Nazis developed ghettoes for sub-human creatures among them; Jews, gypsies, homosexuals, the mentally and developmentally retarded, political and religious dissenters. The assemblages of those in concentration camps made it more easeful to continue on to that society's solution for the removal of sub-humans from a point of tolerated existence to total obliteration.
This was merely a tributary, a side-issue to the greater purpose of gifting the world with a race of uber-mentchen, supermen whose physiognomies and intelligence set them apart and above those of other races. Superiority in arms and warfare and purposeful military might would fill in the other blanks and enable Germany to country-by-country establish itself as the Master Race.
Leaving ideology and going on to religious fundamentalism, it becomes an unspeakable affront to a divine presence to permit the existence of a corrupting influence of other, lesser religions, and alternately of secularism. Anything that would lead to a reasoned and accepting existence, devoid of theist-inspired extremism was anathema to the believer who demands abject surrender to the ineffable presence of the Godhead. A total life-dedication to divine worship, eschewing all the temptations that life offers.
Each truncates opportunities for intellectual and social advancement, denies enlightenment and harmony among people. Each derives from a deadly acceptance of limitations to development, social and economic, in favour of a total obligation to worship an unworkable ideology or a consumptive religion. Totalitarianism, whatever the end envisioned.
In their fanatical determinism that brooks no compromise, each delivers a deprivation of the human essence for compassion and human practicality. Each diminishes the opportunity to achieve personal growth and the fostering of group dynamics leading to prosperity. Gulags and excommunications result from dissent where once torture, exile and auto-da-fees were a prevailing method of dealing with outcasts and outsiders.
Mankind does respond well to a kinder guidance leaving him free to worship, receive spiritual guidance, or not, and yet to better himself and his condition. To flounder, or to excel. The natural order of uncorrupted human development. The ancient Greeks knew this well, as did discerning minds before and after, all espousing in their own words the Golden Rule of moderation.
The compelling dysfunction of the consequences of extremism is its own lesson in failure to heed mankind's most basic need. Of freedom to choose. To become an intelligent and choice-discriminating individual. Or not. It is given to us, through our human inheritance to become what we will.
Extremism breeds contempt for humanity and its needs. It insists upon compulsion and compliance, promising dire consequences for doubters. Humankind finds comfort in acceptance and conformity, but it also chafes under the unbearable duress of unrelieved demands that stunt opportunities to advance curiosity, knowledge and hope for the future.
And then there are the religious fundamentalists of the present who view with suspicion and outright hostility any who can not, will not or desire not to share their cultural and social limitations, their hatred of inclusivity and mutual respect and their hateful 'racial' stereotyping.
Moving right along to the current Islamists with their fixation on jihad and suicide attacks and tribal warfare and assassins masked as martyrs and their fervent death squads and their incessantly triumphant "Allah Akbar". All in the name of God.
Labels: Human Fallibility, Religion, That's Life
posted by Pieface @ Monday, June 18, 2007
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