Identity from belief


What happens when someone identifies so strongly with a belief that it is their identity?
Thomas Sowell has discovered True Believers™.

Environmentalist true believers don't think in terms of trade-offs and cost-benefit analysis. There are things that are sacred to them. Trying to get them to compromise on those things would be like trying to convince a Moslem to eat pork, if it was only twice a week.

Compromise and tolerance are not the hallmarks of true believers. What they believe in goes to the heart of what they are. As far as true believers are concerned, you are either one of Us or one of Them.

I wonder if I can claim trademark infringement?

Probably not, as he discusses a little later.

Many crusades of the political left have been misunderstood by people who do not understand that these crusades are about establishing the identity and the superiority of the crusaders.

T.S. Eliot understood this more than half a century ago when he wrote: "Half the harm that is done in this world is due to people who want to feel important. They don't mean to do harm -- but the harm does not interest them. Or they do not see it, or they justify it because they are absorbed in the endless struggle to think well of themselves."

Mr. Sowell in those words has defined the fundamentalist. And speaking as a semi-involved observer, it really doesn't matter if the cause is environmentalism, extreme Christianity, Objectivism, radical Paganism, atheism, or any of the other isms that are floating around out there.

The fundamentalist believes deeply in their cause, so deeply that they do not wish others to believe in any other cause. Their identity exists only as an extension of their cause. Question the precepts of their belief and you are attacking their very sense of self.

And of course, since everyone in the world doesn't share that Holy Belief, all those who turn from the True Way™ becomes the Enemy™.

I joke about it, but that doesn't mean it isn't true.

— NeoWayland

Posted: Tue - October 25, 2005 at 04:47 AM  Tag


 ◊  ◊   ◊  ◊ 

Random selections from NeoWayland's library


Pagan Vigil "Because LIBERTY demands more than just black or white"
© 2005 - 2009 All Rights Reserved