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Fundamentalism: Menace II Society · Stuff You Should Know

0:00
Speaker 1: Hey, everybody, February one, second, third, we're going to be
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Speaker 1: in Seattle, Portland, San Francisco again. That's right. We can't
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Speaker 1: wait to get back on stage. We've really missed in
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Speaker 1: live shows coming out and see us. Tickets are already
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Speaker 1: on sale and where can you get those at link
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Speaker 1: tree slash s y s K Live. That's l I
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Speaker 1: n K t R dot E slash s y s
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Speaker 1: K Live. I can't wait to see everybody. Welcome to
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Speaker 1: Stuff You Should Know, a production of I Heart Radio. Hey,
0:40
Speaker 1: and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark, and there's
0:43
Speaker 1: Charles W. Chuck Bright and Jerry's here of course, which
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Speaker 1: makes this Stuff you Should Know from you can. I
0:52
Speaker 1: lead off with a couple of just fun quick shoutouts
0:55
Speaker 1: before we get to the not fun hm topic. You know, uh,
1:00
Speaker 1: going to Boston tomorrow to see Pavement. Oh that's what
1:04
Speaker 1: you're doing? Okay? Great? Uh. My old friend from high school,
1:08
Speaker 1: Robert h. Chehade of Toughs University fame, we were texting
1:14
Speaker 1: about Pavement and he said, this is back when tickets
1:17
Speaker 1: went on sale. I'm going to both Atlanta shows, of course,
1:19
Speaker 1: and he said, you want to come up here? I
1:20
Speaker 1: was like, heck, yeah, so going to see the Boys tomorrow,
1:25
Speaker 1: and UH also want to quickly shout out I just
1:27
Speaker 1: got back recently from my uh tenth, eleventh, and twelve
1:32
Speaker 1: Bonnie Prince Billy shows for the last couple of years,
1:35
Speaker 1: and I just want to shout out the great people
1:38
Speaker 1: in towns of Santa Cruz, California, Pasa Roblis, California, and
1:45
Speaker 1: Big Sir. Oh yeah, I just had a great time
1:49
Speaker 1: out there. It's my part of the country. I love
1:52
Speaker 1: northern California. To my vibe, had great breakfast burrito's, great food.
2:00
Speaker 1: They do him right, man. He can't get a real
2:03
Speaker 1: decent breakfast burrito in Atlanta, and I don't know why
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Speaker 1: that's gonna be my retirement job. Oh that's great, I'll come.
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Speaker 1: I'll come patronize your breakfast period. I don't know what
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Speaker 1: is so hard about a California saw breakfast burrito, but
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Speaker 1: Atlanta does not seem capable. It's probably too healthy. It's
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Speaker 1: not healthy. Okay, Well then I don't know. I'm all
2:23
Speaker 1: out of ideas. Chuck's so frustrating anyway, great towns, great shows.
2:30
Speaker 1: Another great run with the great will Oldham. This time solo,
2:35
Speaker 1: first time I've ever seen him literally by himself. He
2:38
Speaker 1: has a variety of arrangements, ranging from full band a
2:42
Speaker 1: couple of people to six or eight bluegrass style. And
2:46
Speaker 1: this was this was just him, which was a treat
2:49
Speaker 1: unplugged for once plugged but acoustic. Yeah, okay, did you
2:55
Speaker 1: I was wondering if you've gotten yourself a vand of
2:57
Speaker 1: hollo him around and yet no, no, I'm flying in
3:00
Speaker 1: these places. Yeah, that seems sensible, because then I ran
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Speaker 1: it'd be tough to get back in time to work.
3:06
Speaker 1: You know, I wish you could fly in a place
3:08
Speaker 1: and rent a little hippie van to follow someone around
3:12
Speaker 1: for a few days. That sounds like your retirement job
3:15
Speaker 1: instead of some dumb mid sized suv. Yeah, you could
3:18
Speaker 1: be like, run a VW wagon, get a free breakfast burrito.
3:24
Speaker 1: There you go. That's that's it. I might invest in
3:27
Speaker 1: that one. All right. Now, let's talk about fundamentalism. Yeah,
3:31
Speaker 1: let's talk about fundamentalism. Um, this is uh, this is
3:34
Speaker 1: one of those kind of I guess episodes that ties
3:38
Speaker 1: into a bunch of other stuff, and it's the kind
3:41
Speaker 1: of thing that you don't really think about, and then
3:42
Speaker 1: when you do think about you wish you weren't thinking about.
3:45
Speaker 1: But it's kind of important, I think for everybody to
3:47
Speaker 1: be aware of because with fundamentalism, a lot of people,
3:51
Speaker 1: especially non religious people, just presume that fundamentalism is a
3:56
Speaker 1: religious thing only necessarily deaf only does affect religions most easily,
4:02
Speaker 1: as we'll see, But basically anything that people really hold
4:06
Speaker 1: dear um can actually produce fundamentalism. And when you kind
4:11
Speaker 1: of strip it of its religious connotations, um it it
4:15
Speaker 1: becomes clear like, oh yeah, there's a lot of fundamentalism
4:18
Speaker 1: going on around. It's especially in two UM and it's
4:24
Speaker 1: it has given me just researching this, it's given me
4:27
Speaker 1: like a deeper impulse to be like, hold the center,
4:30
Speaker 1: Hold the center. We can make it through this. We
4:33
Speaker 1: just have to. We just have to get to the
4:35
Speaker 1: other side and make sure that the center remains intact.
4:38
Speaker 1: You know. Yeah, I think, I mean, you put this together.
4:40
Speaker 1: You did a great job, by the way, on a
4:43
Speaker 1: on a tough topic. But um, I think the sociologists
4:48
Speaker 1: that you found that said, uh, this really had it
4:51
Speaker 1: is um. Fundamentalism is an ideology rather than a theology,
4:56
Speaker 1: so it can be religious in nature, but it doesn't
4:59
Speaker 1: have to be all that to say that sort of
5:02
Speaker 1: a long winded c o A that this is not
5:04
Speaker 1: a hit piece on religion at all, but it is.
5:08
Speaker 1: You know, I think it is going to end up
5:09
Speaker 1: being a bit of a condemnation on fundamentalism, because it's
5:13
Speaker 1: not a great way to be to say, hey, the
5:16
Speaker 1: way we think of things is the only right way.
5:19
Speaker 1: Everybody else is wrong, and I don't want anything to
5:22
Speaker 1: do with you. Well, not only that you need to
5:25
Speaker 1: change your viewpoints to find that follow mine, because mine's
5:29
Speaker 1: the only right way to think. That's a terrible way
5:32
Speaker 1: to be terrible and and truly, when you start to
5:35
Speaker 1: research fundamentalism, you you do start to see it everywhere.
5:39
Speaker 1: Maybe not stuff that checks every single box, but when
5:42
Speaker 1: you understand the basics of it, it's it becomes clear
5:46
Speaker 1: we're surrounded by it right now. Um, And that's actually
5:49
Speaker 1: kind of a new thing. Um. One of the things
5:51
Speaker 1: about fundamentalism is when when you kind of listen to
5:55
Speaker 1: what they're saying, they imagine that they're they're taking society
5:59
Speaker 1: back to this you know, golden age or golden arrow
6:02
Speaker 1: and things, you know, we're more sensible and more predictable
6:06
Speaker 1: and reliable and things just made sense more. But UM
6:10
Speaker 1: fundamentalism is actually a pretty modern thing. Um. It only
6:14
Speaker 1: arose starting in about eighteen seventy. Uh, and it was
6:18
Speaker 1: originally UM this kind of uh assault or response to
6:24
Speaker 1: progressive ism in religion. Yeah, that's a good way to
6:29
Speaker 1: say it. I think the first wave he said, ran
6:32
Speaker 1: from about eighteen seventy to nineteen nine. I'm sorry, and
6:38
Speaker 1: uh and we'll you know, we'll see in a minute
6:40
Speaker 1: here kind of how and why it ended. The first
6:42
Speaker 1: run at least, or at least brought it underground. But
6:45
Speaker 1: it started or it took its name at least from
6:48
Speaker 1: a series of pamphlets called The Fundamentals colon Uh, Testimony
6:55
Speaker 1: of the Truth. And that kind of says it all
6:58
Speaker 1: right there, They're like someone saying, this is the truth.
7:02
Speaker 1: This is not our opinion on maybe how things should be.
7:05
Speaker 1: Is this is the one way that things clearly should be,
7:08
Speaker 1: because it's the only way, because it's the one truth. Yeah.
7:12
Speaker 1: And around that time, in the late nineteenth century, UM
7:15
Speaker 1: religion in America was starting to become more progressive because
7:19
Speaker 1: society was modernizing and to kind of adapt and change
7:23
Speaker 1: and alter itself to this modernizing society. UM, just the
7:30
Speaker 1: understanding of what religion meant was under transition, and fundamentalists said, no, no, no,
7:35
Speaker 1: religion is religion. It doesn't matter what society does. This
7:38
Speaker 1: is the truth, This is the this is the way
7:42
Speaker 1: that it's supposed to be, and we need to stop
7:44
Speaker 1: progressing away from it and being accommodating to to modern society.
7:48
Speaker 1: We need to make modern society go back to the
7:50
Speaker 1: old ways, you know, the ways were we're in charge. Yeah,
7:54
Speaker 1: and there was a big um sort of one of
7:57
Speaker 1: the first big face punches to fundamentalism came about in
8:01
Speaker 1: eighteen fifty nine. Uh well, I kind of helped give
8:05
Speaker 1: rise to the original fundamentalism. But the publication of On
8:09
Speaker 1: the Origin of the Species from Darwin, which basically you know,
8:12
Speaker 1: everyone knows what that did. That introduced evolution and natural
8:15
Speaker 1: selection and really undermine sort of in writing for the
8:20
Speaker 1: first time, it challenged creationism as why we're here and
8:25
Speaker 1: how we got here, and it was it's sort of
8:29
Speaker 1: as you'll see that you know, at times when um,
8:32
Speaker 1: a fundamentalist might think, or a religion might think that
8:35
Speaker 1: they're being threatened by new ideas, that's sort of when
8:39
Speaker 1: the lockdown goes on and they really sort of rise
8:43
Speaker 1: to the occasion, and that sort of helped birth the
8:46
Speaker 1: big first rise of fundamentalism. Yeah, fundamentalism UM took its
8:50
Speaker 1: first swipe at modern modernity. Yeah sure, UM with the
8:55
Speaker 1: Scopes Monkey trial in UM. It was uh Tennessee versus Scopes,
9:02
Speaker 1: where Tennessee had charged public UM school teacher John Scopes
9:07
Speaker 1: of teaching evolution in the classroom, which was against the law.
9:11
Speaker 1: They charged the science teacher with teaching science exactly, That's
9:14
Speaker 1: exactly right, UM, And a guy, a very powerful and
9:18
Speaker 1: um prestigious and smart attorney named Clarence Darrow came to
9:22
Speaker 1: the aid of John Scopes, UM, and the Scopes Monkey
9:26
Speaker 1: trial actually ended up putting not John Scopes on trial,
9:30
Speaker 1: but fundamentalism on trial. And Clarence Darrow was not a
9:33
Speaker 1: fan of fundamentalism, and he basically used this trial as
9:36
Speaker 1: an excuse to just just show how ridiculous and backwards
9:40
Speaker 1: these fundamentalists beliefs were. That's right, and it worked. Uh
9:45
Speaker 1: he in a sense, he lost the trial. I believe
9:49
Speaker 1: in that until nineteen sixty seven that ban on teaching
9:54
Speaker 1: evolution remained in effect, uh seven from UM. But you know,
10:00
Speaker 1: he lost a battle. He won the war and that
10:02
Speaker 1: the coverage of the Scopes monkey trial really like kind
10:07
Speaker 1: of blew the whole thing up and dealt a big
10:10
Speaker 1: blow to what fundamentalism was in the US and how
10:14
Speaker 1: much sort of influence they might have moving forward. And
10:18
Speaker 1: kind of what it did post Scopes was it kind
10:20
Speaker 1: of moved it back underground for several decades. Yeah. I
10:26
Speaker 1: kind of think of the Scopes Monkey Trial and the
10:28
Speaker 1: result of it is like, um, when Homer gets embarrassed
10:31
Speaker 1: on The Simpsons and the whole town just points and
10:33
Speaker 1: laughs at him. In that instance, Homer is fundamentalism in
10:37
Speaker 1: the nine twenties in America, right. Like, society did not
10:40
Speaker 1: think much of it afterwards, which is surprising because it
10:44
Speaker 1: had been kind of a respected school of thought UM
10:47
Speaker 1: for a little while, and I guess it just kind
10:49
Speaker 1: of it just went too far towards the mainstream and
10:53
Speaker 1: as it went underground. It's not like it just went away, UM.
10:57
Speaker 1: It actually built up a kind of like shadow institution
11:03
Speaker 1: to rival the secular society like schools, UM TV stations, UH, colleges, seminaries,
11:12
Speaker 1: mission groups, and then also started to really kind of
11:15
Speaker 1: recruit new followers and members of these fundamentalist ideas UM
11:20
Speaker 1: through churches, through church outreach as well. Um, and over
11:25
Speaker 1: the years they just kind of built more and more
11:27
Speaker 1: strength and more and more strength than in the late seventies.
11:30
Speaker 1: Was just like a tidal wave of fundamentalism swept across
11:35
Speaker 1: the world and really caught sociology off guard. Yeah, and
11:39
Speaker 1: like you said, around the world, it wasn't just we're
11:41
Speaker 1: not just saying like you United States Christians did this.
11:45
Speaker 1: It was it popped up in some very surprising places sometimes.
11:48
Speaker 1: But again, it kind of all happened at once. But
11:52
Speaker 1: there was a big distinction here with the second wave,
11:55
Speaker 1: and that the first wave was really too um to
11:59
Speaker 1: to kind of strike back against progressive religious movement and
12:03
Speaker 1: kind of keep religion as it was and not to
12:07
Speaker 1: modernize religion in any way. This go around, it said, uh,
12:12
Speaker 1: society as a whole, I don't want anything to do
12:15
Speaker 1: with this modernization and this progressivism that's going on, and
12:19
Speaker 1: forget religion, Like, we want to get involved in government
12:23
Speaker 1: and we'll and we're gonna do it in a big way.
12:25
Speaker 1: And that's when the Christian right was born and groups
12:29
Speaker 1: like the Moral Majority and the Christian Coalition put big
12:33
Speaker 1: money into politics and help you know, sort of the
12:37
Speaker 1: beginning of getting politicians elected with a with a pretty
12:42
Speaker 1: severe religious bent. Yeah. And in some cases they were
12:46
Speaker 1: directly trying to elect fundamentalists like Pat Robertson actually ran
12:50
Speaker 1: for president campaign UM and uh did not win, but
12:56
Speaker 1: he is about as fundamentalists as you can get and
12:59
Speaker 1: see like a mainstream television station with the seven hundred club,
13:03
Speaker 1: but also like backing UM politicians with such gusto that
13:09
Speaker 1: the politicians they got elected basically owed them. Uh. And
13:14
Speaker 1: in that way, fundamentalism like really kind of crept into
13:18
Speaker 1: um American politics. And since that time you start to
13:21
Speaker 1: see things like basically a challenge to the concept of
13:25
Speaker 1: something like a separation of church and state that is
13:28
Speaker 1: completely at odds with American Christian fundamentalism. Uh. And so
13:32
Speaker 1: there's been as as fundamentalism has gotten more and more
13:35
Speaker 1: into American politics, there the line between church and state,
13:39
Speaker 1: um has been blurred more and more. And that's just
13:42
Speaker 1: one example of it. Yeah. And like you mentioned, it
13:45
Speaker 1: happened all around the world in the late seventies. In
13:47
Speaker 1: ninety nine, to be specific, Uh, militant Schiites followed Uh
13:53
Speaker 1: it's all Komany and took Iran away from the Shaw
13:57
Speaker 1: and installed uh Komani as the leader. And you know,
14:02
Speaker 1: I remember this when I was a kid. If you
14:04
Speaker 1: and I mentioned this on the show before. If you
14:05
Speaker 1: go back and just google Iran pre revolution, you will
14:10
Speaker 1: see a very swinging sixties and seventies groovy country. Uh.
14:15
Speaker 1: That is not like the Iran we know today. And
14:18
Speaker 1: that was partially not partially, that was completely due to
14:22
Speaker 1: the Shiite uprising and revolution that happened because of fundamental
14:25
Speaker 1: religious fundamentalism in their case. Yeah, it's exactly like if
14:30
Speaker 1: followers of Jerry Folwell um created an armed insurgency and
14:36
Speaker 1: overthrew the American government and installed Jerry Falwell as the
14:39
Speaker 1: supreme leader of America. It's the exact same thing. That's
14:42
Speaker 1: what happened in Iran. And it's really sad to see,
14:45
Speaker 1: but I mean that's what happened, and it was part
14:48
Speaker 1: of this wave of of fundamentalism. Um. There was also
14:52
Speaker 1: Israel started to get more fundamentalist starting in nineteen seventy four.
14:56
Speaker 1: There's still um a lot of challenges by fundamentalism within
15:00
Speaker 1: Israeli politics today. UM. India has a nationalist party, a
15:05
Speaker 1: Hindu nationalist party, I should say, the b j P Um,
15:08
Speaker 1: they're fundamentalists, Hindu fundamentalists. Um, they've actually held power like
15:12
Speaker 1: the presidency multiple times since nineteen eighty UM. And then
15:16
Speaker 1: today there's still waves of fundamentalism going on in Africa.
15:21
Speaker 1: Has become a laboratory for Christian fundamentalists who basically travel
15:27
Speaker 1: to Africa as activists and um get new laws, fundamentalist
15:32
Speaker 1: laws passed in countries like Uganda, whereas of two thousand
15:36
Speaker 1: and fourteen, you can be sentenced to life in prison
15:39
Speaker 1: just for being gay. That is thanks to American fundamentalists
15:43
Speaker 1: who traveled to Uganda, got in with the government and
15:47
Speaker 1: changed laws like that, or got laws like that created
15:49
Speaker 1: or enforced. Yeah, and it's it's crazy when you look
15:52
Speaker 1: at the all this happening at once, Like you said,
15:55
Speaker 1: you know, it's seventy nine in Iran, seventy four in Israel,
15:59
Speaker 1: then I teen seventies in the United States. Uh, it
16:03
Speaker 1: was just a it's weird how things happened like that.
16:06
Speaker 1: I wonder if there's a podcast topic in there about
16:09
Speaker 1: like un nonplanned coalescence of you know, anything, just a zeitgeist. Yeah,
16:18
Speaker 1: I guess that that's sort of the word I'm looking for.
16:21
Speaker 1: I wonder too, because it's not like the shi i
16:24
Speaker 1: Um militants in Iran. We're undergoing the same experience as
16:29
Speaker 1: the Moral Majority in the US. But the timing is insane.
16:34
Speaker 1: I mean we're talking like within a year of each other.
16:37
Speaker 1: There's the Iranian Revolution and the Moral Majority springs up
16:40
Speaker 1: and gets Ronald Reagan elected like that. That's and then
16:43
Speaker 1: in in India in nineteen eighty that the Hindu Nationalist
16:47
Speaker 1: Um Party gets founded. Like all of it happened at
16:50
Speaker 1: the same time, and it had to be had to
16:52
Speaker 1: intertwine in some way. But I just don't see like
16:56
Speaker 1: um you know, um pat Robertson in the comine like
17:02
Speaker 1: coordinating any So, how did it happens? I don't know.
17:07
Speaker 1: It's a pushback against something else that was happening, But
17:10
Speaker 1: I don't know. I think I find that stuff fascinating,
17:12
Speaker 1: how societies move as a whole. All right, how about
17:15
Speaker 1: a break? Yes, I think we're doing good so far, man,
17:19
Speaker 1: And we'll talk a little bit more about the F
17:22
Speaker 1: word right after this. Okay. So there's some things that
17:44
Speaker 1: that people some misconceptions um see you jinkstas chuck um
17:50
Speaker 1: that people have about fundamental See that's why I said
17:54
Speaker 1: the F word. I wasn't trying to be cheeky. I'm
17:56
Speaker 1: having a hard time saying the word. So. Um, there's
17:59
Speaker 1: some miscons sceptions about fundamentalism that most people, especially secular
18:03
Speaker 1: people have, And like we said at the outset that
18:06
Speaker 1: a lot of people think it's it's an infection of
18:09
Speaker 1: religion and that it's a religion problem and if you
18:12
Speaker 1: aren't a member of a church or a religious group,
18:15
Speaker 1: it's not your problem, and that's absolutely untrue, and that
18:18
Speaker 1: that viewpoint of the whole thing is actually a big
18:22
Speaker 1: problem for society as a whole. Yeah. Uh. And we
18:26
Speaker 1: mentioned earlier a little bit that like often you'll see
18:29
Speaker 1: fundamentalism creep up when they feel like something is being
18:33
Speaker 1: threatened that they hold dear, and that's when they really
18:35
Speaker 1: locked down and get active. And you can look at
18:38
Speaker 1: things like, you know, people are fundamentalists about the Second Amendment,
18:42
Speaker 1: people are fundamentalists about the First Amendment. Uh. And it's
18:45
Speaker 1: usually more so at times where they feel like those
18:49
Speaker 1: amendments are threatened. During the Cold War, people were, um,
18:54
Speaker 1: you know, the threat of communism really made people a
18:57
Speaker 1: lot of people fundamentalists about uh, the free market, let's say,
19:02
Speaker 1: and uh, what else. There's a lot of other great examples. Um. Ironically,
19:07
Speaker 1: people like Bill Maher and Richard Dawkins who are basically
19:10
Speaker 1: militantly anti religious. Um, they are accused by some of
19:15
Speaker 1: being fundamentalists, and they're thinking in part because they're intolerant, which,
19:20
Speaker 1: as we'll see is a really important part. Um. And
19:23
Speaker 1: that intolerance also gets um liberal college campuses accused of
19:28
Speaker 1: becoming more and more fundamentalist in their thinking, where non
19:32
Speaker 1: liberal professors can actually find their their jobs in jeopardy
19:35
Speaker 1: and actually do get canned because of something they said
19:38
Speaker 1: that wasn't sufficiently liberal enough. Right, So this is kind
19:44
Speaker 1: of what I was talking about earlier, where it's not
19:47
Speaker 1: like Bill March checks every single box of you know, fundamentalism,
19:52
Speaker 1: but if you if you understand fundamental fundamentalism, he actually
19:57
Speaker 1: comes there's a lot of there's enough boxes that it
19:59
Speaker 1: makes question, Okay, is this actually fundamentalist thinking? Um, same
20:04
Speaker 1: with constitutional originalists, Like it does not have to be religion,
20:08
Speaker 1: and once you stop looking at fundamentalism as a really
20:11
Speaker 1: strictly religious thing, it really does open one's eyes to
20:15
Speaker 1: just the world in general. Yeah, I totally agree. Um,
20:19
Speaker 1: you mentioned something really important a second ago in that,
20:21
Speaker 1: which was intolerance, which is a real hallmark of fundamentalism. U.
20:27
Speaker 1: And a really great example that you gave in your
20:30
Speaker 1: research here is the Amish. You can't get any more
20:33
Speaker 1: sort of tighten it and strict religious than the Amish.
20:38
Speaker 1: But the Amish, you know, who knows what they say
20:41
Speaker 1: about us. They may judge us, but what they don't
20:43
Speaker 1: do is leave their community and knock on our door
20:47
Speaker 1: and try and convert you to being Amish and say
20:49
Speaker 1: the Amish way of thinking is the only right way
20:52
Speaker 1: and everyone else should be like this. Yeah, they're not
20:54
Speaker 1: running like Amish people in the local primaries to take
20:57
Speaker 1: over the school board because they want to impose is
21:00
Speaker 1: Amish beliefs on the rest of the community. They don't
21:02
Speaker 1: do that. They're not fundamentalist. And that's a really important
21:06
Speaker 1: distinction and intolerance. It's basically, uh, there there is no compromise.
21:11
Speaker 1: There is one true viewpoint that is correct, and anything
21:16
Speaker 1: that differs from that is the enemy of that. Yeah,
21:19
Speaker 1: I mean, and intolerance is such an important part of
21:22
Speaker 1: fundamentalism that you can almost use it as a litmus
21:25
Speaker 1: test to say, Okay, is this thinking fundamentalist or not,
21:28
Speaker 1: because if if there's no intolerance. You just you got
21:31
Speaker 1: the Amish people who really really believe in in what
21:34
Speaker 1: they believe in, but they're not trying to impose their
21:36
Speaker 1: beliefs on anybody else, and they're fine with you believing
21:39
Speaker 1: whatever you believe. That's that's your problem. You're going to hell.
21:42
Speaker 1: Although I don't think the Amish hopefully think like that.
21:45
Speaker 1: But whatever, UM and that intolerance makes it like incompatible
21:53
Speaker 1: with society because in modern society, UM tolerance is extraordinarily important.
22:00
Speaker 1: And not only is an important, it's it's it's considered
22:04
Speaker 1: to be something that just kind of bubbles up to
22:06
Speaker 1: the top because it ends up holding society together. When
22:10
Speaker 1: you have so many different disparate people of different religions,
22:14
Speaker 1: of different creeds, of different nationalities, of um, different sexual orientation,
22:19
Speaker 1: of different genders, all living together in one country and
22:25
Speaker 1: they can coexist peacefully. Tolerance is just going to develop
22:29
Speaker 1: over time. And if you have intolerance, active intolerance, that's
22:34
Speaker 1: an infection on that society. And that's why fundamentalism is
22:38
Speaker 1: so dangerous to society. So yeah, I mean that's a
22:41
Speaker 1: really good point. And in a in a modern society, Uh,
22:44
Speaker 1: we've talked before about the marketplace of ideas, which is
22:48
Speaker 1: the idea that um. People just throw out a lot
22:51
Speaker 1: of different ideas, and the ones that work the best
22:55
Speaker 1: are the ones that are going to rise to the top,
22:57
Speaker 1: and those are probably going to be the ones that
22:59
Speaker 1: are the most widely accommodating to the most people. And
23:04
Speaker 1: if you are a fundamentalist, you're not a big fan
23:06
Speaker 1: of the marketplace of ideas. You're not a big fan
23:09
Speaker 1: of what's the most widely accommodating. Because as society has
23:13
Speaker 1: progressed over the years, it has gotten more well progressive,
23:16
Speaker 1: and it's gotten more modern, and things have moved forward,
23:20
Speaker 1: and fundamentalism is inherently kind of anti that in general.
23:25
Speaker 1: And they're like that that can spring up in the workplace.
23:29
Speaker 1: It's like I don't want to work. I don't want
23:31
Speaker 1: to have a cubicle next to this kind of person
23:34
Speaker 1: quote unquote UM. And it's not like I'll go quit
23:37
Speaker 1: my job. It's like, uh no, why don't we Why
23:41
Speaker 1: don't they leave? Why don't you fire them right for
23:45
Speaker 1: being gay? Because they're the ones that are the problem.
23:47
Speaker 1: I'm the one that subscribes to the truth. And it
23:51
Speaker 1: doesn't even matter if you're speaking out or not speaking
23:55
Speaker 1: out against fundamentalist beliefs. If you just subscribe to a
23:58
Speaker 1: different way of thinking, you are challenging the truth, and
24:01
Speaker 1: that cannot be tolerated. Opposing viewpoints cannot be tolerated by fundamentalism.
24:07
Speaker 1: They have to be stamped out, they have to be ostracized,
24:10
Speaker 1: they have to have violence against them in some cases. Um.
24:14
Speaker 1: And so it would make more sense to that that
24:17
Speaker 1: fundamentalist worker that their gay coworkers should be fired, not them. Um.
24:22
Speaker 1: And that's that's again, that's a huge contradiction to society,
24:26
Speaker 1: modern society in particular. Yeah, And I mean, you made
24:30
Speaker 1: a really good point when you sort of talked about
24:32
Speaker 1: the hippie movement. Um. Fundamentalism does challenge modernism kind of
24:39
Speaker 1: full stop for control of what's going on. And the
24:43
Speaker 1: hippies they had a counterculture. They didn't like what was
24:47
Speaker 1: going on in modern society. They challenged it as well,
24:50
Speaker 1: but there was a big difference in that they rejected
24:53
Speaker 1: modern society and just sort of turn their backs on
24:56
Speaker 1: it and want to create a new way for themselves,
24:59
Speaker 1: like their own utophe, which obviously was never gonna happen.
25:02
Speaker 1: God bless of hippies. But that's what they tried to do.
25:04
Speaker 1: At least what they didn't do was try and say
25:07
Speaker 1: everybody should be hippies. We want to take control of
25:10
Speaker 1: the government and until everyone that they should lead a
25:13
Speaker 1: hippie lifestyle through through like laws and violence, right right. Yeah. So, Um,
25:20
Speaker 1: what's interesting, Chuck, is what the hippies were espousing as
25:23
Speaker 1: a counter culture was what fundamentalism was doing starting in
25:29
Speaker 1: to basically nineteen eighty in the US. They as a counterculture,
25:33
Speaker 1: they went off and established their own counter culture that
25:37
Speaker 1: they had again their own schools, their own media. Um,
25:40
Speaker 1: it wasn't until they became politically active that they became
25:44
Speaker 1: that second wave where they they they actively were trying
25:49
Speaker 1: to take over the society in order to steer it
25:51
Speaker 1: away from modernity and toward Christianity. And again they keep saying,
25:56
Speaker 1: we want to steer it back into Christianity. That's something
25:59
Speaker 1: that's um, that's super up for debate as well, is
26:02
Speaker 1: just how christian was America before and our our fundamentalist
26:06
Speaker 1: steering us backward or is this a whole new modern
26:09
Speaker 1: direction that we've never been in before? And scholars say
26:12
Speaker 1: definitely the ladder of those two yeah, for sure. And
26:15
Speaker 1: we'll talk a little bit about that later. But Um,
26:18
Speaker 1: some of the traits of fundamentalist groups uh. And again
26:22
Speaker 1: this is this can be any kind of fundamental fundamentalism
26:26
Speaker 1: all around the world. But one we've already kind of
26:28
Speaker 1: talked about is they're reactive to crises. Uh. And that's
26:31
Speaker 1: when you know, I sort of mentioned when they feel
26:34
Speaker 1: like they're being specifically threatened by maybe a law or
26:38
Speaker 1: anything really or a movement or a group another group. Um,
26:41
Speaker 1: then they try to sort of overcome that with uh,
26:46
Speaker 1: with power and of course now with politics. Um. McCarthyism
26:49
Speaker 1: is a really good example there. Um of I mean,
26:51
Speaker 1: the Cold War created a lot of fun different kinds
26:53
Speaker 1: of fundamentalism. Uh. McCarthyism certainly was one of them. Yeah.
26:58
Speaker 1: And so like a fundamentalist might rise on its own
27:02
Speaker 1: just in times of uncertainty, but when things are really
27:05
Speaker 1: uncertain for a lot more people, that's when they start
27:07
Speaker 1: to attract more and more followers. Right. There's also a
27:11
Speaker 1: big component of fundamentalism that is, um, a reliance on
27:16
Speaker 1: simplistic solutions. Right. So like, yeah, the world is huge
27:20
Speaker 1: and complex and scary, but all you have to do
27:22
Speaker 1: is listen to the literal word of God or follow
27:26
Speaker 1: the original wording of the Constitution, and all of your
27:30
Speaker 1: your answer, all of your questions will be answered. You
27:32
Speaker 1: don't even have to think about anything. Just follow the
27:36
Speaker 1: word um. And that's another hallmark of fundamentalism is you
27:39
Speaker 1: are basically blind obedience to some leadership and or set
27:45
Speaker 1: of doctrines. And um. That's one of the reasons that
27:50
Speaker 1: it makes it so attractive. Like you don't have to
27:52
Speaker 1: think about the world. You don't have to wonder about
27:55
Speaker 1: the world and why it's so scary and why it
27:57
Speaker 1: doesn't make sense. Things are the way they are are
28:00
Speaker 1: because that's how they are, That's how they're supposed to be.
28:02
Speaker 1: Like men are more important than women because God made
28:06
Speaker 1: us that way. Like that level of thinking, and like
28:10
Speaker 1: you just put a period on the end. You don't
28:11
Speaker 1: have to wonder any longer why a man is more
28:13
Speaker 1: important than a woman in America these days. Um, that's
28:17
Speaker 1: just that. And that's that's a really big attraction of
28:20
Speaker 1: fundamentalism to people. It's like, um, remember King of the Hill. Yeah,
28:26
Speaker 1: so Bill Doughtree his his buddy. I remember once he said, Um,
28:30
Speaker 1: he missed being in the army because they took the
28:32
Speaker 1: guesswork out of living and like fundamentalism does that for
28:37
Speaker 1: its followers, like they tell what the answers are and
28:40
Speaker 1: you don't have to think about it yourself. Yeah, that's good.
28:44
Speaker 1: I have a friend who I won't name, who his
28:47
Speaker 1: big gripe is when he talks to his you know,
28:49
Speaker 1: he's sort of the black sheep of his family and
28:51
Speaker 1: that they don't align politically. But he says when he
28:55
Speaker 1: tries to challenge them with actual facts and things, he said,
28:58
Speaker 1: they always say the same thing, sing They just sort
29:01
Speaker 1: of turned their head and go, I don't know about that.
29:04
Speaker 1: And that's sort of the I mean, the perfect distillation
29:07
Speaker 1: of simplistic thinking is when met with literal facts and data,
29:13
Speaker 1: just you know, I don't know about that. Like basically,
29:15
Speaker 1: what they're saying is I don't want to that threatens me.
29:17
Speaker 1: I don't want to talk about that, right, And I'm
29:19
Speaker 1: not curious about getting to the bottom of this. I'm
29:21
Speaker 1: not curious about your viewpoint. I'm not curious about my
29:24
Speaker 1: own viewpoint. I don't want it to be challenged. Let's
29:27
Speaker 1: stop talking. What is that a thought terminating something somebody
29:31
Speaker 1: wrote in and told us once about, yeah, like statement
29:35
Speaker 1: or something yeah, or like um, let's agree to disagree,
29:39
Speaker 1: which I still think is valid. But yeah, I get it.
29:43
Speaker 1: I think maybe that's a last resort sort of thing,
29:45
Speaker 1: so you don't like start punching each other exactly that
29:49
Speaker 1: it goes hand in hand with digging your fingertips into
29:51
Speaker 1: the arm of the chain. Exactly. Does someone smell burning sawdust? Oh, Josh,
29:57
Speaker 1: is just across the bar. Uh. Another sort of fundamentalist
30:02
Speaker 1: trait that um can happen is uh. It's not always,
30:05
Speaker 1: but it's a lot of times it's anti science. But
30:09
Speaker 1: at the same time, and we've talked about this a
30:11
Speaker 1: little bit here and there, is it can go the
30:13
Speaker 1: other way. There are some people that are dogmatically fundamentalists, uh,
30:20
Speaker 1: believers in science to a degree that isn't may be helpful. Yeah,
30:25
Speaker 1: that that basically, um uh goes away from the concept
30:30
Speaker 1: of science that science is constantly looking for new answers
30:33
Speaker 1: and everything, and dogmatic science people are like, no, this
30:37
Speaker 1: is it and let's stop, let's stop thinking about it anymore.
30:40
Speaker 1: And if you challenge it, I'm not tolerant of that,
30:42
Speaker 1: and you're wrong, um that that is out there, but
30:46
Speaker 1: that's a an aberration. I think for the most part,
30:48
Speaker 1: it's it is an anti science kind of thing because
30:51
Speaker 1: science is part of modernization of society, and so that
30:55
Speaker 1: makes it an enemy. It's an enemy especially of Christianity
30:59
Speaker 1: or other religions as far as fundamentalism goes, Yeah, for sure. Uh.
31:03
Speaker 1: And then the last couple of things kind of go
31:05
Speaker 1: hand in hand. Is a lot of time, Um, fundamentalists
31:09
Speaker 1: can be conspiracy oriented. Uh, you know a lot of paranoia,
31:13
Speaker 1: sort of dwelling about the and you know, it all
31:16
Speaker 1: comes from it all stems from them feeling threatened about X,
31:20
Speaker 1: Y or z. Uh. And then they usually rally around
31:23
Speaker 1: some sort of charismatic leader, uh, whatever the group is whever,
31:28
Speaker 1: whether it's the Komeni. Even though that didn't maybe didn't
31:32
Speaker 1: translate to America as being a charismatic leader. Uh, he
31:36
Speaker 1: certainly had his followers. Um, But it's usually a man.
31:39
Speaker 1: They usually authoritarians and charismatic. Uh. They usually are bullies
31:45
Speaker 1: in some way or the other. And a lot of
31:47
Speaker 1: times fundamentalists look at these people and admire the like
31:50
Speaker 1: kind of wish they were like them, Like they're doing
31:53
Speaker 1: the things that we would do if we were in power. Yeah,
31:57
Speaker 1: Like I like a guy who can get up there
31:59
Speaker 1: and talk about beating up are critics because I wish
32:01
Speaker 1: I could punch him in the face and he's talking
32:02
Speaker 1: about it and it makes me feel so good. Yeah,
32:05
Speaker 1: that kind of thing UM, and that conspiracy thing in particular,
32:09
Speaker 1: I was reading about that there's a huge overlap that's
32:12
Speaker 1: developed between Q and non beliefs and evangelical Christianity, and
32:17
Speaker 1: they have a lot in common about like end times apocalypticism.
32:23
Speaker 1: Just there's a lot of overlap. But but one of
32:26
Speaker 1: the things that I think is starting to become apparent
32:29
Speaker 1: is that people of faith, especially fundamentalists, because they are
32:35
Speaker 1: maybe the most people of the most faithful of the
32:38
Speaker 1: faithful UM, are possibly more susceptible to conspiracy theories because
32:45
Speaker 1: literalist religion, whereas like your your religious text is is infallible,
32:50
Speaker 1: there's no mistakes in it. It means everything literally, and
32:53
Speaker 1: where science or physics contradicts it, sciences physics is wrong.
32:58
Speaker 1: That level of of of UM belief and something like
33:02
Speaker 1: Q and on that's just that out there require faith,
33:05
Speaker 1: and if you're already faithful to something like that, you
33:09
Speaker 1: apparently are more susceptible to things like conspiracy theories that
33:13
Speaker 1: require you to ignore facts and just take things on faith,
33:17
Speaker 1: and that that has kind of infected evangelicalism. Uh, something
33:21
Speaker 1: like I think I saw on a five thirty eight
33:23
Speaker 1: um blog that like a quarter of evangelicals in America
33:29
Speaker 1: believe in Q and On too, which is that's a
33:32
Speaker 1: tremendous amount of people. I think a third of people
33:34
Speaker 1: in America are evangelical, So a quarter of that third
33:38
Speaker 1: subscribe to Q and onbeliefs belief. Well, yeah, and here's
33:42
Speaker 1: something I don't think we maybe have hammered home enough
33:45
Speaker 1: is that there is a large portion of of American
33:51
Speaker 1: religious people who are not fundamentalists and who did since
33:56
Speaker 1: the beginnings of modernization try and roll with it and say, well,
34:00
Speaker 1: you know what, maybe the Bible isn't to be taken
34:03
Speaker 1: so literally. Maybe these are allegories and metaphors. Maybe Noah
34:07
Speaker 1: didn't literally take two of every living thing, and maybe
34:10
Speaker 1: this red sea didn't literally part. Maybe these are all
34:14
Speaker 1: stories that we should draw inspiration or or our our
34:18
Speaker 1: way of looking at the world from and and believe
34:21
Speaker 1: in science. And they're combatible, uh not compatible compatible, Uh
34:26
Speaker 1: there are That is a very huge part of religion.
34:29
Speaker 1: So we're not painting religion with this single brush here. Uh,
34:34
Speaker 1: we're just talking about one one part of it, not
34:36
Speaker 1: at all. And some of the most vocal and outspoken
34:38
Speaker 1: opponents and scholars of fundamentalism are religious groups. Because you've
34:44
Speaker 1: got progressives and moderates in any given religion, and they've
34:49
Speaker 1: got fundamentalists who are trying to take over take control
34:52
Speaker 1: of their religious group. Uh, and that's a problem for them.
34:56
Speaker 1: And it was evangelicals, moderate and liberal evangelicals who started
35:00
Speaker 1: telling the rest of the world like, hey, q and
35:03
Speaker 1: On is making serious headways into our religious group, and
35:07
Speaker 1: it's a big problem and we need to figure out
35:09
Speaker 1: what's going on here. They were the ones who told
35:12
Speaker 1: everybody else basically. Yeah, And those fundamentalists, the progressive non
35:18
Speaker 1: literalists are in a way their enemy as well of
35:22
Speaker 1: the fundamentalists, you know, like within their own religion, The
35:27
Speaker 1: progressive non literalists of like you know, the people say like,
35:31
Speaker 1: well maybe we should take the Bible is just a
35:32
Speaker 1: metaphor their their enemies of the fundamentalists. Yeah. Absolutely, And
35:37
Speaker 1: again that's where it started back in the eighteen seventies
35:39
Speaker 1: and the original split right, Yeah, exactly. It was a
35:43
Speaker 1: struggle within the Baptists and the Presbyterians for control over
35:48
Speaker 1: the Baptists and the Presbyterians. These fundamentalists came up and said,
35:52
Speaker 1: stop accommodating modern society. You're straying away from the Word.
35:57
Speaker 1: And their beliefs got harder and harder and more and
36:00
Speaker 1: more and more literal, and they were a huge problem
36:03
Speaker 1: for the Baptist send the Presbyterians for a while. Yeah
36:05
Speaker 1: for sure. All right, let's take our final break and
36:08
Speaker 1: we'll talk about what history thinks about fundamentalism right after this,
36:31
Speaker 1: So Chok, we talked about how fundamentalist groups say, they
36:34
Speaker 1: claim that they're taking society back to like this Golden
36:37
Speaker 1: Ages era where things were the way that the fundamentalists
36:40
Speaker 1: wanted them before, right, And that doesn't seem to be true.
36:43
Speaker 1: But again, fundamentalists seemed to be a modern phenomenon, taking
36:47
Speaker 1: us in directions that we've never been in before, where
36:50
Speaker 1: the fundamentalists are the ones in charge, right. Um. And
36:54
Speaker 1: one of the ways that they do that is by
36:56
Speaker 1: selectively citing stuff in religious texts or in historical documents
37:03
Speaker 1: that support their ideas and um the christian Um. American
37:10
Speaker 1: Christian fundamentalists love to do that with UM, like historical
37:14
Speaker 1: documents from the founding of the United States and even
37:17
Speaker 1: back when the United States was just some colonies as
37:20
Speaker 1: British colonies. Yeah, because a lot of those documents say
37:24
Speaker 1: the word God and mentioned God, whether it's the Charter,
37:28
Speaker 1: the original charter for Virginia in the early sixteen hundreds,
37:32
Speaker 1: to George Washington saying that the drafting of the Constitution
37:37
Speaker 1: was an event that was in the hand of God.
37:41
Speaker 1: Um fundamentalists say, hey, George Washington is George Washington. He
37:46
Speaker 1: also mentioned God. And it's also he also says that
37:50
Speaker 1: you shouldn't compromise because the Constitution was written in the
37:56
Speaker 1: in the hand of God, and so that kind of
37:58
Speaker 1: takes all the boxes as far as drawn a line
38:01
Speaker 1: in the sand. But again, all this stuff is sort
38:03
Speaker 1: of out of context. And when you go back and
38:05
Speaker 1: you look at what the original Charter of Virginia meant
38:10
Speaker 1: and why it was written, or what George Washington meant
38:13
Speaker 1: and what ultimately made it into the Constitution, which was
38:15
Speaker 1: not the word God, you really got to look at
38:18
Speaker 1: that in context, like what was what was the deal
38:20
Speaker 1: with a Virginia Charter. So the Virginia Charter said that
38:23
Speaker 1: one of the colonists goals was to propagate the Christian
38:26
Speaker 1: religion to the indigenous people that they met there, although
38:29
Speaker 1: they didn't call them indigenous people. Um And if you
38:32
Speaker 1: look at the Virginia Charter from six o six, it
38:35
Speaker 1: was written by people who were British, who were corporate
38:38
Speaker 1: shareholders who lived in London, who were ruled by the crown,
38:42
Speaker 1: and their aim was not to form a new nation,
38:45
Speaker 1: and just Christianizing the indigenous people they met there just
38:48
Speaker 1: added legitimacy to this commercial pursuit that they were undertaking.
38:53
Speaker 1: It's it's pretty flimsy as far as like a proof
38:57
Speaker 1: that America was founded as a Christian nation that in
39:00
Speaker 1: the menalists need to take back. Yeah. Yeah, that's a
39:04
Speaker 1: good point. And like I said, the word God didn't
39:06
Speaker 1: make it into the Constitution. The word science did. In
39:10
Speaker 1: Section eight Article one, UH promote the progress of science
39:13
Speaker 1: and useful arts by securing for limited times to authors
39:16
Speaker 1: and inventors the exclusive right to their respective writings and discoveries.
39:21
Speaker 1: Um And you know, America may have been founded on
39:25
Speaker 1: Christian principles, but this is important. Very early on, you know,
39:29
Speaker 1: I think what was it like a hundred and fifty
39:31
Speaker 1: years after the Puritan colony of Plymouth was was founded.
39:35
Speaker 1: The Christian experiment in government in America was over, and
39:39
Speaker 1: they said, no, we're going to found the federal government.
39:41
Speaker 1: And Thomas Jefferson said, we're going to separate church and
39:44
Speaker 1: state because we're going down a bad road. Yeah. Even
39:47
Speaker 1: if you know, George Washington meant what he said about
39:50
Speaker 1: being in the hand of God, and he was a
39:51
Speaker 1: Christian and a lot of the other founding fathers were Christians,
39:54
Speaker 1: and um, they had Christian beliefs. But when it came
39:57
Speaker 1: time to found the United States of a America, it's
40:01
Speaker 1: not like they hadn't considered like there, they hadn't even
40:03
Speaker 1: crossed their mind to to found a Christian nation. There
40:07
Speaker 1: have been Christian governments in North America already, and they said, no,
40:11
Speaker 1: we're going to abandon that and go a different direction.
40:14
Speaker 1: So literally, America was purposefully not founded as a Christian nation.
40:18
Speaker 1: It could have been, had every opportunity to be, and
40:21
Speaker 1: it wasn't. And the point is, I mean, Chuck, we
40:24
Speaker 1: could make an entire spinoff podcast just going tip for
40:28
Speaker 1: tat on on contexts and liberalism with fundamentalism. But the
40:33
Speaker 1: point is society's evolved, so it doesn't matter what was
40:38
Speaker 1: going on four years ago. Like, yes, they did a
40:41
Speaker 1: really good job writing in the constitution, founding some some
40:44
Speaker 1: are creating some really great guiding documents. But society has
40:48
Speaker 1: evolved since then. It's become much more diverse, much more
40:52
Speaker 1: culturally rich, and we've just changed, most people say for
40:57
Speaker 1: the better. And there's a lot wrong with it. It
40:59
Speaker 1: was modern sty There's a lot right that if you
41:03
Speaker 1: had the choice, you would not want to go back
41:05
Speaker 1: to sixteen o six and live um compared to today. Yeah,
41:10
Speaker 1: and modernism is really basically what sociologists think is why
41:14
Speaker 1: fundamentalism still exists as as a response to modernization. And
41:20
Speaker 1: you know, modernization has it's ups and its downs over
41:23
Speaker 1: the years. It's has been perfect. Pre modernization, though there
41:28
Speaker 1: was people were a lot more the same, uh they
41:31
Speaker 1: you know, we've talked about this before. You know, pre
41:33
Speaker 1: urban uh sort of factory work settings, people lived on farms,
41:38
Speaker 1: they lived on on the land and worked the land,
41:40
Speaker 1: and they lived in the fields, and they were a
41:42
Speaker 1: lot more alike and there were a lot more like
41:45
Speaker 1: sort of the same group of people. And industrialization came
41:48
Speaker 1: along and it fragmented society and entirely different people started
41:54
Speaker 1: to become people like, it changed the way people were.
41:58
Speaker 1: It didn't just change how they went to work in
42:00
Speaker 1: where they live. All that inherently changed what people could
42:04
Speaker 1: be like. And uh, social values changed and that's a
42:09
Speaker 1: part of modernization. And you know, for better or for worse,
42:12
Speaker 1: we it is is fragmented us and there's been a
42:15
Speaker 1: lot of negative aspects to it, but it's also come
42:18
Speaker 1: along with protection of civil rights and racial and gender
42:22
Speaker 1: equality and uh, you know the World Wide Web, which
42:26
Speaker 1: is you know, we can all agree with the best
42:28
Speaker 1: thing ever, right, it's flawless, no downside. But but yeah,
42:32
Speaker 1: I mean it would be ridiculous to say that modern
42:35
Speaker 1: society is just you know, perfect or even generally better
42:39
Speaker 1: in every single way. Now, there's plenty of stuff that's
42:41
Speaker 1: wrong with it, like um, the emphasis on industry and
42:44
Speaker 1: profits and and um can can be really isolating and
42:48
Speaker 1: make people feel like there's they're they're just basically a
42:51
Speaker 1: cog in a machine. That's a big problem. But yes,
42:54
Speaker 1: there are there are plenty of solutions and plenty of
42:57
Speaker 1: things that have gotten better too. And one of the
42:59
Speaker 1: things about modern society is that we have brought more
43:03
Speaker 1: and more different people together who have more and more
43:05
Speaker 1: different ideas and experiences, and it's become clear that no
43:09
Speaker 1: one group is right or has all the answers, or
43:13
Speaker 1: is the guardians of the truth. It's just been shown
43:16
Speaker 1: not to be correct. And um, these a pair of
43:19
Speaker 1: sociologists kind of put it, uh, Michael O. Emerson and
43:23
Speaker 1: David Hartman. They said, when when you have when you
43:25
Speaker 1: bring together people of differing views and values, what rise
43:29
Speaker 1: to the top has shared values are tolerance and acceptance,
43:32
Speaker 1: and that these become the core values of highly modernized societies.
43:37
Speaker 1: And that is great for most of us. But if
43:39
Speaker 1: you're a fundamentalist, that is the opposite of great. That
43:43
Speaker 1: is the opposite direction that you're supposed to be going.
43:45
Speaker 1: Because not everybody's right. We're the only ones that are right.
43:49
Speaker 1: All of you are wrong, and you're wrong in a
43:51
Speaker 1: really terrible way that we have to change, so we
43:54
Speaker 1: have to take over society. Yeah, I mean, you know,
43:57
Speaker 1: one of the big threats to fundamentalist and why they've
44:02
Speaker 1: think dug in more and more over the years is
44:05
Speaker 1: it's science is coming along to demystify a lot of
44:07
Speaker 1: the things since the dawn of time that we're you know,
44:11
Speaker 1: took took tried to explain you know, the seasons and
44:15
Speaker 1: rain and thunder and death, and you know, in various ways,
44:20
Speaker 1: and people since then have been trying to explain that stuff.
44:23
Speaker 1: Then science progresses and comes along and says, oh, wait
44:26
Speaker 1: a minute. You know, we can explain natural selection. Now
44:28
Speaker 1: we can explain gravity, we can explain electro magnetism, and
44:32
Speaker 1: you know, we know why the apple falls from the tree.
44:35
Speaker 1: It doesn't have to be some magical thing or some
44:37
Speaker 1: religious allegory. And so what that does is that pushes
44:42
Speaker 1: religion out a little bit because fewer people needed it
44:46
Speaker 1: to explain things, which can be a big part of religion,
44:50
Speaker 1: and all of a sudden, religion wasn't like the overriding
44:55
Speaker 1: fabric of society, but it was just a part of society.
44:58
Speaker 1: And that that's a big threat a fundamentalist. Yeah, because
45:01
Speaker 1: a lot of people just say, okay, well science makes
45:04
Speaker 1: a lot of sense to me. I'm not gonna abandon
45:06
Speaker 1: my religious beliefs. I still believe in God and Jesus
45:09
Speaker 1: or Mohammed or buddha Um I like I'm going, like
45:14
Speaker 1: you said earlier, I find those things compatible, not combatible.
45:19
Speaker 1: But there's a group of people who are just find
45:23
Speaker 1: this unbearable. Modern society is just unbearable. It doesn't make sense.
45:27
Speaker 1: I don't know the people who live around me. Um,
45:29
Speaker 1: I'm not valued like I used to be or like
45:32
Speaker 1: my great great grandfather was. Um, my wife is working
45:36
Speaker 1: out of the house. What's up with that kind of thing?
45:38
Speaker 1: And um, Rather than their their beliefs loosening and progressing,
45:44
Speaker 1: they actually become more inflexible, more rigid as as society
45:51
Speaker 1: continues to progress and their beliefs are left behind because
45:54
Speaker 1: they feel left behind, so they actually come to rail
45:57
Speaker 1: against society and that these are the will who become fundamentalists.
46:01
Speaker 1: So part of it is feeling left out, left behind
46:05
Speaker 1: or um opposed by society in general. That's part of it.
46:10
Speaker 1: But then also part of it is that attraction of um,
46:14
Speaker 1: you know, somebody having all the answers in a really
46:17
Speaker 1: frankly confusing period of history, which is what we're in
46:21
Speaker 1: right now. Yeah, And you know when people get together
46:24
Speaker 1: and isolate themselves from others and say we're the only
46:27
Speaker 1: ones that are right, and hey, we need to get
46:29
Speaker 1: involved in politics and get a candidate that things like
46:32
Speaker 1: us out there, you kind of get where we are today,
46:35
Speaker 1: which is like you said, it's a pretty Oh what's
46:40
Speaker 1: the word scary is too easy? Uncertain? Yeah, I mean
46:46
Speaker 1: it is uncertain. Like things are changing so fast right now,
46:49
Speaker 1: it's totally understandable why fundamentalist movements would be swelling. It's
46:53
Speaker 1: scary as as heck. Right now, I feel like the
46:58
Speaker 1: world is way more nuts than it was maybe thirty
47:03
Speaker 1: years ago. Maybe that's true, maybe it's not. It seems
47:06
Speaker 1: like it to me, and I think it's because of
47:08
Speaker 1: this incredibly rapid social change. For me, society is generally
47:13
Speaker 1: going in the direction that I agree with, so I'm
47:16
Speaker 1: not threatened by it, even though I'm still just overwhelmed
47:20
Speaker 1: by how fast things are changing, and then also by
47:23
Speaker 1: how much tension there is from opposing sides to that change. Um,
47:27
Speaker 1: it's a really unsettling and unsettled time, I think. So
47:31
Speaker 1: I can totally understand why fundamentalism would be so attractive
47:35
Speaker 1: to so many people right now. Um. But again, one
47:39
Speaker 1: of the tenets of fundamentalism, Chuck, is if you can't
47:42
Speaker 1: take over the ship, sink it. That's that's basically the
47:46
Speaker 1: second way fundamentalism in a nutshell. So they can't be ignored.
47:49
Speaker 1: Society can't just ignore it. We have to figure out
47:52
Speaker 1: what to do about fundamentalist impulses. And there's some good ideas,
47:57
Speaker 1: some not good ideas. Uh, and so that maybe worth
48:00
Speaker 1: trying and not worth trying. But we're still kind of
48:03
Speaker 1: in the very beginning stages of figuring out how to
48:07
Speaker 1: reconcile modernized society with fundamentalist impulses. Got any ideas well?
48:14
Speaker 1: I saw one pair of sociologists who wrote a book
48:19
Speaker 1: suggested that everybody should just read more fiction. Okay, I
48:23
Speaker 1: couldn't believe that that was they meant that literally, because
48:27
Speaker 1: they um they say that if you read more fiction,
48:30
Speaker 1: it can kind of transport you into other people's experiences
48:33
Speaker 1: and points of view and will foster tolerance, which again,
48:36
Speaker 1: intolerance is the hallmark of of fundamentalism. I'll throw one
48:40
Speaker 1: out there. I just thought of off the dome, travel
48:43
Speaker 1: someplace that you may not ordinarily travel, it's a big one.
48:47
Speaker 1: Or travel someplace period. Yeah, if you can. I know
48:50
Speaker 1: it's a financial burden for some and now everyone can
48:53
Speaker 1: just like jet off to Paris to see how the
48:55
Speaker 1: Parisians live. No, but it turns out you are allowed
48:58
Speaker 1: to leave ohio, Oh no, I that's true. Another thing
49:06
Speaker 1: that they say can help is to be more tolerant
49:10
Speaker 1: yourself and to be friendly and to approach a fundamentalist
49:15
Speaker 1: with friendship, because one kind of criticism you'll hear from
49:18
Speaker 1: fundamentalists is sort of thrown it right back in the
49:22
Speaker 1: face of a non fundamentalist and say, you're in just
49:25
Speaker 1: as intolerant of my beliefs as I am of yours.
49:28
Speaker 1: I think a counter to that would be to say, well,
49:30
Speaker 1: know what we're intolerant of is your extreme intolerance, which
49:35
Speaker 1: is a big distinction. Yeah, and that's like you're you're
49:37
Speaker 1: intolerant of my racism. It's like that's not a great argument. Yeah,
49:41
Speaker 1: but that's like one of those things that it's like, Okay, well, yeah,
49:44
Speaker 1: you can't just be tolerant of everything, Like there is
49:47
Speaker 1: a line, and like, you know, racism is a really
49:51
Speaker 1: good example of that. It's a really great line that
49:53
Speaker 1: society shouldn't just be tolerant of that. But you know,
49:58
Speaker 1: how can you figure out how to apply tolerance to
50:01
Speaker 1: the people who feel that way? Like, can can you
50:03
Speaker 1: be tolerant on an individual level as as their neighbor
50:06
Speaker 1: or their coworker or the fellow grocery store shopper, to
50:10
Speaker 1: where you can display some form of tolerance with them
50:14
Speaker 1: without supporting or or allowing their their you know, tolerance
50:19
Speaker 1: for their beliefs, of their racist beliefs. You know, it's
50:22
Speaker 1: it's I think the reason why we are not a
50:27
Speaker 1: fundamentalist podcast, Chuck, is because we're not saying this is
50:30
Speaker 1: the answer, this is this is what you do. There
50:32
Speaker 1: aren't any answers right now, but there's a lot of
50:34
Speaker 1: different ideas floating around that could work or might not.
50:38
Speaker 1: I think of music can be united. I think sports
50:41
Speaker 1: fandom can be a uniter. Uh. I mean, you'll never
50:46
Speaker 1: see a more tolerant, harmonious place than like at a
50:49
Speaker 1: Falcons game in the South and the Deep South, you know,
50:53
Speaker 1: black and white people like urban versus some of the
50:59
Speaker 1: most rural, red, nicky type folks. You could imagine like
51:02
Speaker 1: arm in arm for the same cause and it's a
51:06
Speaker 1: dumb football game. But like, there are small lessons to
51:09
Speaker 1: be found. I think in those situations. Oh yeah, for sure.
51:12
Speaker 1: I remember um reading a study years back that people
51:16
Speaker 1: who were super racist who lived in towns where Um
51:22
Speaker 1: like Hispanic I can never remember Latin Latin X people
51:27
Speaker 1: had come to live. There was like a large population
51:29
Speaker 1: of Latin X people to where they lived among them,
51:33
Speaker 1: where they might still support like immigration policies um or
51:38
Speaker 1: anti immigration policies, but they would be like, but not
51:41
Speaker 1: my town. Like they had developed tolerance without even realizing it,
51:44
Speaker 1: and their their overall beliefs hadn't caught up yet. So
51:47
Speaker 1: maybe they were still voting one way, but as far
51:50
Speaker 1: as that person that they knew down the street, they
51:53
Speaker 1: were not about to let that person get deported. Not
51:55
Speaker 1: my town kind of thing. And yeah, so I think
51:57
Speaker 1: whether it's a Falcons game or a like a musical
52:01
Speaker 1: rock concert um, bringing people of you know, disparate backgrounds
52:06
Speaker 1: together does foster tolerance, I think too. And you know
52:10
Speaker 1: it may not. I'm not saying that. Uh, these people
52:13
Speaker 1: of the Falcons game walk out of there forging lifelong
52:16
Speaker 1: friendships and they're like, you know what, why don't we
52:18
Speaker 1: get together tomorrow for lunch? But you know, there are
52:21
Speaker 1: there are small experiences that maybe can add up to
52:25
Speaker 1: something at some point in life. I don't know. I'm like,
52:29
Speaker 1: I feel desperate for people to get along better. Yeah,
52:31
Speaker 1: for sure. And there are people out there who are saying, like,
52:34
Speaker 1: what are you talking about? No, we should not even
52:36
Speaker 1: be we should be isolating people with racist beliefs. Um. No,
52:41
Speaker 1: it's not enough to just have somebody like have fun
52:44
Speaker 1: at the Falcons game. Like, we're way beyond that point.
52:47
Speaker 1: And I mean I get that argument too, Like I
52:49
Speaker 1: don't necessarily subscribe to it, but I can get how
52:51
Speaker 1: people are like, No, we're at like five alarmed stage.
52:54
Speaker 1: We need to figure out huge radical responses of fundamentalism
52:58
Speaker 1: right now because they're knocking at the door of our
53:01
Speaker 1: the highest levels of government. And if they are an
53:04
Speaker 1: infection on society, we've got huge problems because they are
53:08
Speaker 1: growing and gaining strength. So I totally get both. Both
53:13
Speaker 1: arguments are both ways. Yeah, one other thing I think, Yeah,
53:19
Speaker 1: one more thing. Um, So, religion has a place in
53:22
Speaker 1: modernized society. It helps people from feeling totally crazy. Um,
53:27
Speaker 1: if you need a sense of community, go join a
53:29
Speaker 1: religious group that's like a built in, ready made community
53:32
Speaker 1: for you. Who's going to accept you into it? Moderate
53:35
Speaker 1: and progressive, I should say, um groups. Um, But there's
53:40
Speaker 1: the religion doesn't have to be the only institution in
53:44
Speaker 1: society that addresses things like angst and unease and um,
53:51
Speaker 1: you know a need for reassurance, Like what if society,
53:54
Speaker 1: what if? What if? Science? What if? Um a culture
53:58
Speaker 1: in general just kind of undertook the project of finding
54:02
Speaker 1: meaning in this crazy modern world and like helping reassure people.
54:08
Speaker 1: Like that's what people join fundamentalist movements for is reassurance. Ultimately,
54:13
Speaker 1: that is the basis of joining a fundamentalist movement. They
54:16
Speaker 1: want to feel reassured that everything is going to be okay.
54:19
Speaker 1: And if you can find equally reassuring alternatives to fundamentalism,
54:24
Speaker 1: I would guess that fundamentalism. I don't think it would
54:26
Speaker 1: ever fully go away. There's always going to be fundamentalists,
54:29
Speaker 1: but they would be so increasingly small an insular that
54:32
Speaker 1: you could conceivably just generally let them do their own
54:35
Speaker 1: thing and tolerate them. Maybe. So Okay, that's it, he said,
54:44
Speaker 1: with a resigned sigh. Uh. Well, I'm just gonna ask
54:48
Speaker 1: just to button it up. You've got anything else. I
54:50
Speaker 1: got nothing else. I don't either, Chuck. If you want
54:53
Speaker 1: to know more about fundamentalism, start researching it. There's a
54:55
Speaker 1: lot out there that will probably open your eyes. And
54:58
Speaker 1: since I said open your is, it's time for a
55:00
Speaker 1: listener mail. Uh, this is about basectomies. And by the way,
55:07
Speaker 1: we heard from a few dudes that are that already
55:10
Speaker 1: have said, and this is day one of getting emails
55:13
Speaker 1: in real time, that hey, vasectomies aren't quite as painless
55:16
Speaker 1: as y'all made it out to be by the way,
55:19
Speaker 1: I guess it can vary obviously from person to person,
55:21
Speaker 1: but we've had quite a few guys that were like
55:24
Speaker 1: it heard bad for a couple of days, and I
55:26
Speaker 1: was very uncomfortable for a couple of weeks. Poor guys.
55:28
Speaker 1: So I just wanted to say that, hey, guys, listen
55:31
Speaker 1: to the basectomy episode. I have to say you're doing
55:33
Speaker 1: a great service by disseminating this information. I'm a twenty
55:37
Speaker 1: six year old who's been with my wife for almost
55:40
Speaker 1: nine years. We've talked, oh well I got married young,
55:43
Speaker 1: Good for you. We've talked about not wanting children for years,
55:46
Speaker 1: but made the jump to getting mesectomy in July. For me,
55:50
Speaker 1: it was relatively painless, but for the rest of that
55:52
Speaker 1: day it did feel like someone had landed a low
55:55
Speaker 1: below punch. Uh. The next day I had little pain
55:58
Speaker 1: with use of ice packs. Uh, it was fine, and
56:02
Speaker 1: by day three I was back to exercising. After a
56:05
Speaker 1: couple of months, I feel psychologically and sexually liberated. Our
56:10
Speaker 1: friends stated their concerns on how we would move on
56:13
Speaker 1: if regret crept in. Since we made this decision about
56:16
Speaker 1: not wanting children, um, having biological children is not a concern,
56:20
Speaker 1: and if we ever regret it, because life is never definite,
56:23
Speaker 1: we can look at adopting highly about all the answers,
56:26
Speaker 1: he should start a fundamentalist group, got all answers. You
56:30
Speaker 1: guys mentioned that should be called a asodomy because there
56:33
Speaker 1: isn't anything removed. But with my procedure and for others
56:36
Speaker 1: I've seen on YouTube, they remove about one centimeter of
56:41
Speaker 1: the vase completely and send it to a tissue sampling,
56:46
Speaker 1: so technically ectomy still works in this case. Thank you
56:49
Speaker 1: for the years of knowledge and entertainment. YouTube. Put special
56:51
Speaker 1: comfort in the podcast realm wishing you Unburdened ejaculations that
56:58
Speaker 1: is from Ryan. Very nice, Ryan, thank you and for
57:02
Speaker 1: everyone here in the United States. About one centimeter of
57:06
Speaker 1: best differences point three nine three seven zero zero seven.
57:12
Speaker 1: Well done. Uh. If you want to be like Ryan
57:15
Speaker 1: and share your viewpoints and have us be like wow,
57:18
Speaker 1: this guy really knows what he's talking about, you can
57:21
Speaker 1: send us an email too, and guy of course, is
57:24
Speaker 1: as always gender neutral, because we're in a modern society
57:27
Speaker 1: and we love that fact. Anyway, you can send us
57:30
Speaker 1: that email to stuff podcast at iHeart radio dot com.
57:37
Speaker 1: Stuff you Should Know is a production of iHeart Radio.
57:40
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57:46
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