There are abundant social problems facing civilization today. Except for earthquakes and meteorites, these dilemmas are human-made. Perhaps we could add the tides but various countries are quickly intervening with their ebbs and flows. Whether climate, crime or corrupting customs we should assume that the new cataclysms we are about to face are caused by ourselves…yes, YOU and ME…and the rest of the world! It would be supremely comforting if we could find something other than ourselves to blame.
The historical/social fact is that all societies are constantly poised on the edge of new eras and new beginnings. Change is unstoppable. These cycles do not flow smoothly and easily. It is a myth that change is seamless. Change is more like a revolution that starts slowly, grows glacially and then is followed by associated spurts, surges and finally, cataclysms. The beginning of World War I (1914) is a superior example of one of humankinds’ permanent upheavals. The world continues in the throes of the wars that followed The Great War. These changes tend to grow exponentially as society becomes more complex. I look backward with warmth to our first hand cranked Model-T automobile, as well as our hand cranked telephone, with positive yearnings. Those days will not return. “Mert”, the telefonist, will never again say, “Number Please”.
You and I are about to experience the afflictions and adversities of these coming dramatic social disorders. Some of these events are taking place now. We do not have to wait. Yet, there are people who believe climate change is a gossamer tale, concocted by ill-informed cranks and troublemakers.
While scientists overwhelmingly warn of the predicaments ahead, there are still those who believe these events will not happen or at the very least are projected dilemmas, wildly exaggerated by an elitist coffee-latte sipping upper class. No, these are not only simple climate deniers like Andrew Bolt (Herald-Sun ‘Bolt Report’) a long-time denier and popular journalist. Nor do they necessarily belong to religious born-again cults who deny scientific truths in favour of their personal beliefs. Likewise, they are not blindfolded politicians like James M. Inhofe (Oklahoma) who famously opined that climate change is, “…the greatest hoax ever perpetrated on the American people.” No less than the current Prime Minister of Australia, Tony Abbott, said, “Climate change is crap!”
Climate deniers, akin to the above, are as confused as those who continue to state that the Nazi’s did not kill millions in their death camps. They are also of the same corporate mind as the tobacco lobbyists who still insist on marketing deadly toxins because tobacco is legal. They believe they are right. No. They know they are right! Here is the problem; believers are too often morphing and expanding into Believists and Believists are returning the compliment.
Believers are religiously based and depend upon various articles of faith to support and establish their belief systems whether it be Muslim or Christian or others. There is no argument they cannot possibly deflect with the phrase, “Well, I believe!” End of discussion. These religionists (Believers) have their priests, mullahs, shamans, holy writings or other manifestations which includes a God who speaks directly to them. They may also have a leader who is given a special gift by a diety such as Immanuel Swedenborg who was certain he was given spiritual gifts and received a special message in 1744 to write a book (The Heavenly Doctrine). This book, he knew, would reform all Christianity. Joseph Smith (Mormons) had an almost identical experience. Who is right? Today, the few followers in the worldwide denomination of thirty-seven churches of Swedenborg (The New Church) believe his published books are true and divinely inspired. Of course, the dilemma is, if the Swedenborgians have all necessary Truth in its grasp then all Believers can claim the same divine origins; and they do. The dilemma becomes a puzzle wrapped in an enigma.
Believists, in a basic way, are philosophically the same and yet different at the identical instant. Believists MAY be religiously oriented and identify with religion. Any deviation from their secular doctrines are erroneous and certainly immoral. These non-god believers or Believists, should be viewed as ‘Secular Fundamentalists’. It is this concept of true belief in its assorted disguises which brings me to explain what I call: BELIEVISTS. These ‘Believists’ (Secular Fundamentalists) are not necessarily religious fundamentalists although pious fundamentalism may be part of their rationale and they may well be faithful members of an aggressive denomination or sect.
I define a ‘Believist’ as a person or group of believers bonded by a limiting non-scientific assurance that they are correct in their secular beliefs and all other concepts are wrong. Their hardened morality is as stiff and controlled as any religious institution. Indeed, a hardened Believist may well have deified his/her beliefs such as many Americans view the Federal Constitution of the United States which is God-given in the same way it is also a God-given right to own guns. End of argument.
The above may sound like a definition of religious fundamentalism and the concepts are first cousins. One promises eternal life in heaven and the other points to the establishment of a perfect society on earth. A medley of definitions states that fundamentalism refers to a belief in strict adherence to an established set of basic (religious) principles. Secular Fundamentalism has the same practical belief system as religious fundamentalism. Perhaps the solitary difference in philosophy is that Secular Fundamentalism does not offer Paradise but gives hell if the other side wins.
To distill the concept: a Believist (Secular Fundamentalist) is one who basks in the adoration of those who agree with his/her set of guidelines and turns his/her back on those who do not agree. During the McCarthy era in the USA (1950s) I was warned that being the President of The Students for Democratic Action at my university I would inherit deep problems. Senator Joe McCarthy (Wisconsin) shook the very foundations of the USA in his famous witch hunt of the 1950s. The SDA was considered a Communist front organization…it was not. However, I did have an uncle who claimed to be a Communist. That was enough for Cohen and Shine and other McCarthyites. America was witnessing the horrors of strident Secular Fundamentalism in terms of ‘McCarthyism’ or the deep suspicion that anyone who even mentioned communism in any words except derision could end up in federal prison…and many did. It was to my great disappointment c1954 that I was not brought before the Washington Committee to be interrogated by the Senator himself. The Army McCarthy hearings were being held by the United States Senate’s Subcommittee on Investigations between April 1954 and June 1954. So imbued with his brand of Secular Fundamentalism, the Senator had recently exceeded his powers in his eagerness to discover any disloyal American and he lost his political authority…and I missed a free trip to Washington DC. McCarthy’s excesses of secular belief, confused with references to Christianity and the Bible, may be found in many of his speeches, all of which were fairly much the same as the texts encapsulated in his Secular Fundamentalism. He said in Wheeling, West Virgina (9 February 1950):
As you know, very recently the secretary of state (Dean Acheson) proclaimed his loyalty to a man guilty of what has always been considered as the most abominable of all crimes — of being a traitor to the people who gave him a position of great trust. The secretary of state, in attempting to justify his continued devotion to the man who sold out the Christian world to the atheistic world, referred to Christ’s Sermon on the Mount as a justification and reason therefore, and the reaction of the American people to this would have made the heart of Abraham Lincoln glad. When this pompous diplomat in striped pants, with a phony British accent, proclaimed to the American people that Christ on the Mount endorsed communism, high treason, and betrayal of a sacred trust, the blasphemy was so great that it awakened the dormant indignation of the American people. He has lighted the spark which is resulting in a moral uprising and will end only when the whole sorry mess of twisted warped thinkers are swept from the national scene so that we may have a new birth of national honesty and decency in government.
McCarthy died young but not ‘isms’ such as his which are still redolent like strong garlic. In the past few generations, the world has had to deal with Socialism, Capitalism, Fascism, Communism, Libertarianism, Darwinism, and some would recently say economic Friedmanism and other ‘isms’. To be a believer in any of these one would have to become a Believist as all these philosophies demand blind loyalty to a non-religious creed and all schools of thought generously use the language of religious belief. These ‘isms’ all gather their faithful, reject all other philosophies and become a militant belief system. They have their own creeds, their own hymns (i.e. ‘America the Beautiful’, ‘Take Me out to the Ball Park,’ Kimigayo: Japanese anthem meaning, ‘May the Emperor’s reign last forever.’) and even their own rituals, not unlike the Grand Finals in Australia or the Ashes in the UK.
Listen to two aficionados of cricket and Aussie Rules having a strident argument at a pub. It would seem that they are quite mad about silly sport, as they have become Believists. There is no possible way of winning either over to the ‘other’ side as they are antagonists and operate best as opponents. They are assured of their ‘rightness’ even if their side loses.
As Secular Fundamaentalists are also Believists and therefore dangerous, Believists are also anti science. Believists operate on narrow belief systems, which leaves little room for manoeuvres or negotiation. Believists must not allow any other beliefs which run counter to their own. Believists are intellectually lazy because they neither want nor need other opinions. Believists, being exclusive, do not take new paths but learn to live within their self-constructed high, stone, windowless walls. Believists are anti-progress and seek to abort change whenever possible. Instead of being builders, Believists tear down.
Contrarily, the problem is that liberal thinking people, by definition, must allow and examine all ideas and thought processes including those of the Believists and Believers. Believists have the luxury of only needing to believe his/her outlooks and opinions. They need not travel any further than their own limited ideas will carry them. The Believist’s road map has only well marked, straight thoroughfares and set out to follow only one direction. When a Believist (Secular Fundamentalist) combines his/her true believing faith with a Believer in God-based faith, a formidable union is established.
I am aware of one way to combat this human sacrilege of controlled thinking: to fearlessly face the innuendoes and attacks of Secular Fundamentalists and True Believers as these groups assail all ideas with which they do not agree. Putting this dilemma in terms of Kierkegaard’s existential thinking, truth is not found in immutable laws given by vaporous spirits but in the internal struggle each person has when seeking truth.
Where will these conflicting ideas between the liberal thinking person versus the Believist, Secular Fundamentalists and the Divinely inspired Believer find us in the near and remote future? There are few records concerning mankind turning a voluntary corner to take new and better directions. Yet, frozen thinking must be opposed and cooperative, new ideas offered as new solutions. In geological terms, we humans are new kids on the block and have not yet been really tested to see how we are going to develop. What we do know is that new thinking, new directions and new energies must put us onto new networks.
In poetic terms Robert Frost states the dilemma, as well as any philosopher, in his work:
The Road Not Taken
(Selected passage)
Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;
…
Then took the other, as just as fair,
…
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I,
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.
There is little doubt that humanity is at a crucial revolution on the road ahead. It is happening now.
