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luiza-w-ogrodzie Kopia calego artykulu 29.03.05, 14:13

How the West leads the fight against itself
March 28, 2005

Fundamentalism, secular or religious, is a creation of the modern, humanist
world, writes John Carroll.

The principal motive for the rise of fundamentalisms in recent decades -
Islamic, Christian and Jewish - is a reaction against modernity. That is
Western modernity, which combines the material progress that has been generated
by capitalist industrialisation and the humanist culture that framed it.

The provocation has been the nihilistic consequences of humanism. A movement
that started in the Renaissance with the ambition of founding a human-centred
view of existence, to replace the religious one that had preceded it, failed to
find its own answer to the great metaphysical questions that confront all
humans: where do I come from, what should I do with my life, and what happens
to me at death. The philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche proposed that with
the "death of God" the truth about existence has become that life is either
absurd or horrible. He satirised the modern individual as the "last man", whose
only interest in life is his digestion; that is, comfort.

Nietzsche's bleak view has been projected ever since in countless works of
literature, art and music, depicting the human condition as meaningless and
depressive - Hamlet's "sterile promontory". The theme also emerged that if
death has no sense - merely a biological event ending in rot and stink - then
neither does life.

Nihilism - the belief that there is nothing - is the inevitable end point of
the humanist cultural experiment. Needless to say, humans cannot live with the
ultimate conclusion that this is all there is. So humanist modernity has
generated a range of reactions against itself. Fundamentalism is one.

From believing in nothing there is a leap to the opposite - fanatical
attachment to a body of doctrine that is claimed to be absolute and universal,
the word of God himself, spoken directly through one or other of his chosen
prophets. Sigmund Freud would have included this reaction under his
psychological category of "negation" - where fear that I believe nothing
surfaces as its opposite, dogmatic assertiveness that I know the one Truth. And
it is the case that people who deeply know what they know are usually relaxed
in themselves, feeling no need to assert their faith. The need to convince
others cloaks a need to convince oneself. It is insecurity about belief that
triggers intolerant dogma, as defence. Fundamentalism is a symptom of fragile
faith.

To generalise the point - all churches that take to creeds and doctrine, as is
their inner tendency, are themselves defending against their own lack of trust
in their foundations. Fundamentalism is merely the general church orientation
magnified. And, the argument concludes, the more aggressive the assertion of
belief, the more insecure the foundation.

There is plausibility to the sociological caricature of anomic life in the
modern city. The lonely, anonymous individual lost in the metropolis, with a
job that brings little fulfilment, intimacies that tend to be half-hearted and
fleeting, finds his or her endemic anxiety anaesthetised by a cornucopia of
consumption. The restless mind may be distracted in luxury apartments furnished
from Ikea, and ever-new gadgets; in orgiastic sport, nightclubs and a permanent
banquet of foods, drinks and drugs; in a wealth of intellectual fads supplied
in the new-age supermarket. In this context, the most tempting of antidotes is
certainty. In particular, what beckons is the certainty provided by belonging
to a strong community with fixed boundaries, and the certainty of dogmatic,
unquestioned belief.

The mainstream Christian churches with their liberal attitudes, their tolerance
of just about anybody and anything, seem like pale and ineffectual offshoots of
nihilist humanism. It is little wonder that it is Pentecostalist churches that
are growing, with their combination of vital contemporary music and
fundamentalist views on scripture and morals. Likewise, liberal and secular
Judaism has spawned a fundamentalist reaction.

Fundamentalist Islam brings with it an additional, potent ingredient - power
envy. As the foremost Western scholar of Islam, Bernard Lewis, put it in his
book What Went Wrong? the Muslim world spent 500 years in economic and social
stagnation, watching the West remorselessly increasing in wealth and global
power. Napoleon conquered Egypt; the Ottoman Empire collapsed; tiny Israel
defeated much larger Arab powers; and Western taste and values pervade the
Middle East.

Osama bin Laden combines fundamentalist belief with a mania for destruction.
His motivation is revealed in his lack of any inclination to rebuild Muslim
societies - his focus is single-mindedly on damaging the West. His targets on
September 11, 2001, were not religious sites, but the centres of American
power. He has Western counterparts. In literature, the charismatic leader in
Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness, and his reworking in the film Fight Club,
both find their last pleasure in an orgy of destruction. The same was true for
Hitler and Stalin, both products of nihilist Western modernity, who took to two
secular fundamentalisms: fascism and communism.

Lewis argues that the fatal flaw in Islam has been its xenophobia, its refusal
to open itself to the benefits of humanism. It has closed its mind to modern
science, and the entire spirit of inquiry that has driven Western progress. It
has likewise closed itself off from the one cultural achievement of humanism,
its positive, the Enlightenment belief in universal human rights, and the
practical implementation of this belief in liberal-democratic political orders.

Fundamentalisms, in general, are illiberal. In flight from humanist nihilism,
they also reject humanist tolerance.

The West continues itself to generate a range of secular fundamentalisms, ones
without the horror effects of 20th-century totalitarianism. There are fanatical
greenies who believe that to damage one tree is to poison the Garden of Eden.
There is a virulent new anti-Americanism. There is self-righteous hatred of one
political leader or another, imagining they will bring on social corruption,
even the end of the world, if they remain in power.

Fundamentalism today is one of humanism's pathologies. It is a creation of the
West and will continue as long as we fail to rediscover from within our own
culture persuasive answers to the central metaphysical questions. Without such
answers we humans cannot live.

John Carroll is professor of sociology at La Trobe University. This article was
originally published in the Griffith Review: The Lure of Fundamentalism (ABC
Books).

Pozdrawiam
Luiza-w-Ogrodzie

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luiza-w-ogrodzie "Nasz nowy koszmar: US of A" 29.03.05, 14:18

I jeszcze jeden artykul z dzisiejszego wydania tej samej gazety - wyniki
sondazu na temat, czego obawiaja sie Australijczycy. Otoz uwazaja polityke
zagraniczna USA za grozniejsza niz rozwoj Chin i rownowazna zagrozeniu ze
strony islamskiego funcdamentalizmu.

Our new nightmare: the United States of America
By Tom Allard and Louise Williams
March 29, 2005

Iraq adventure leaves little taste for possible Taiwan call-up
What we fear
Australians are as just as concerned about United States foreign policy as
Islamic extremism and regard the US as more dangerous than a rising China,
according to a new poll.

The Australians Speak: 2005 survey, commissioned by the Lowy Institute for
International Policy, found 57 per cent of Australians were "very worried"
or "fairly worried" about the external threat posed by both US foreign policy
and Islamic extremism.

"We asked about a series of threats from the outside," said the institute's
executive director, Allan Gyngell. "Most startling of all was the precise
equivalence of Islamic fundamentalism and US foreign policy as a source of
concern.

"The question is whether this is a response to a particular administration or a
broader cultural drifting apart."

More than two-thirds - 68 per cent - said Australia took too much notice of the
US in its foreign policy deliberations.

The findings would not be welcomed by the Howard Government, which has railed
against perceived anti-Americanism and emphasised the importance of the
alliance as the US takes a more unilateralist and activist posture in world
affairs.

Advertisement
AdvertisementThe Lowy Institute found that 72 per cent regarded the US alliance
as very important or fairly important. But in another finding, the survey of
1000 people found respondents were strongly opposed to siding with the US over
Taiwan should conflict flare between Taipei and Beijing.

Mr Gyngell said he was also very surprised that China rated so positively. Only
35 per cent of respondents had concerns about China's growing power.

"It's not that I thought Australians had a particularly bellicose view on
China, but people see opportunities in China, both economically and
strategically."

Taiwan is an issue of acute sensitivity at the moment, with tensions escalating
with the mainland after China's parliament rubber-stamped a decree warning the
province of dire consequences if it declares independence. Asked if they had
positive or negative feelings about a list of 15 different countries,
institutions and regions, respondents rated the US only 11th, six percentage
points ahead of Indonesia, which has traditionally been viewed as a threat by
many Australians.

Fifty-eight per cent of those surveyed viewed the US positively, compared with
94 per cent for New Zealand, 86 per cent for Britain, 84 per cent for Japan,
and 69 per cent for China.

Fifty-one per cent thought a free-trade agreement with China was a good idea,
compared with only 34 per cent for the US deal.

Unfriendly nations acquiring nuclear weapons and global warming were considered
more worrying than international terrorism.

Asked about Australian foreign policy goals, most support came for "improving
the global environment", with 75 per cent judging it to be "very important".

Protecting jobs and strengthening the economy rated as high, followed by
combating terrorism and preventing nuclear proliferation. Promoting democracy
rated bottom.

The poll had a margin of error of 3.1 per cent.

Pozdrawiam
Luiza-w-Ogrodzie

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- swiatlo Re: "Nasz nowy koszmar: US of A" 29.03.05, 21:15
  
  Z tym się właśnie nie zgadzam. Sam nie jestem zwolennikiem amerykańskiego
  fundamentalizmu, ale obecnie jestem po jego stronie gdyż uważam że obecnie
  tylko on jest w stanie się przeciwstawić, a mam nadzieję że i zniszczyć,
  barbarzyńskość islamu. Tak więc moje prywatne poparcie dla "amerykanizmu" jest
  czysto taktyczne.
  Zła należy niszczyć zaczynając od najgorszego, i potem po kolei ku górze.

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