The Fundamentalist Fallacy
Shedding light on the danger and irony of traditional conservative values
“When the fundamentalist wins, the world enters a dark age”
-Steven Pressfield, The War of Art
Virtually every generation since the dawn of civilization has seen a group of angry, backwards bigots who demonize and dehumanize others for the sake of maintaining lasting hierarchical order despite living in an ever-evolving world.
When in a position of power, they deviously sow their fundamentalist values into cultural and political belief systems such that their constituents, over time, embody these regressive and exclusionary tenets to the point that they can visualize no other path to navigating reality. Followers of these fundamentalist values suppress or entirely discard their imagination and compassionate human spirit. They willingly rid themselves of their humanity to become one of the tribe.
While writing his 2002 book The War of Art, Steven Pressfield seemingly predicted the conditions of our current fundamentalist crisis in the United States. Our modern struggle with fundamentalism manifests itself through American nationalism.
“Fundamentalism is the philosophy of the powerless, the conquered, the displaced and the dispossessed. Its spawning ground is the wreckage of political and military defeat… In such desperate times, the vanquished race would perish without a doctrine that restored hope and pride.”
-Steven Pressfield, The War of Art
Thus we saw the rise of Donald Trump, poster child for American pride, champion of the dispossessed. Desperate for a “doctrine that [would restore] hope and pride”, his cultist followers bought into his trickery. They’re sold on the idea that he actually cares about them, while in reality he only echoes and amplifies their worldviews so he can leverage their gullibility for personal gain.
Even so, his followers have unleashed real evil upon the world. Trump successfully leveraged dormant fundamentalist tendencies and gave them a free pass to spill over into society.
His rise to power corresponds exactly with Pressfield’s writing. Events that led to the displacement of his followers include the loss of traditional jobs, evolving family structures, widespread criticism of tradition, and the popularity of progressive ideals like sustainability and freedom of expression, to name a few.
Change is Natural. Change is Human.
Essentially, development and sophistication have turned their world upside down. Change is their enemy. Too deeply rooted in tradition and unwilling to adapt to change, they feel like the country they know and love is falling apart.
They don’t even know they’re being played because they’re in too deep. They have become the weapon their puppet masters wield to strike down progressive efforts. The subtle, decades-long marriage of “Rugged Individualism” and patriotism have conditioned those susceptible to fundamentalist dogma to view adaptation to change as a political threat to American tradition.
But change is not a political tool. It is a core aspect of humanity. Politics are merely the method by which we can implement (or in the case of fundamentalists, reduce) the essence of humanity in society. Unbeknownst to the fundamentalists, adaptability is one of the core “traditions” a human can celebrate, thanks to evolution. Our ancestors roamed the Earth for hundreds of thousands of years adapting as they went. Change and adaptability are part of, just as we are a part of the natural world that is always changing.
Hostility and Scapegoating
Too proud and too blind to realize that their traditions are social constructs designed to advance consumerism and control certain populations, they place the blame elsewhere to justify their unhappiness. They refute introspection, viewing it as a feminine, and therefore, lesser, practice. And so they project their inner conflicts onto others. Carl Jung identifies this as a sort of defense mechanism utilized by those who refuse to analyze their own internal struggles. Moreover, we see daily that American nationalists, too far gone, openly deny the existence of internal struggles.
In short, fundamentalists actively work to blame others for the artificial problems they create for themselves. Rather than using their human creativity to make the world a better place, they weaponize it to knock others down a peg so that they may feel superior.
“He creates destruction. Even the structures he builds, his schools and networks of organization, are dedicated to annihilation, of his enemies and of himself. But the fundamentalist reserves his greatest creativity for the fashioning of Satan, the image of his foe, in opposition to which he defines and gives meaning to his own life.”
-Steven Pressfield, The War of Art
It is in this “fashioning of Satan” that we see the most hateful outbursts from Trump and his supporters. They target immigrants, foreigners, the poor, the rich, the youth, Democrats, liberals, science, academia, windmills, soup, linen, you name it. They go after anyone or anything that doesn’t align with their values. They demonize them. And it is this aggression that gives meaning to their lives.
This treads dangerously close to the capacity for dehumanization exhibited in Philip Zimbardo’s famous Stanford prison experiment. When influenced strongly enough by culture, humans are capable of terrible things.
But we can prevent succumbing to cultural pressures in the first place if we, as a society, would prioritize prevention over reaction. We must look inward and come to terms with our capacity for evil. In doing so, we become aware of it and can pinpoint its origins. But awareness is key. We first have to realize it’s there to begin with. And perhaps more importantly, once we become aware of it, we cannot shy away from or suppress it.
And this is where the fundamentalist falls short. Introspection is an embarrassment to his manhood. He turns off his brain and simply allows his baseless rage to take command. He feels safer crawling back into his mental box, where new ideas cannot enter.
Willingly blocking out new information is essentially the surrender of one’s humanity. Look at it this way: the human brain is the most complex object in the known universe. We’ve dreamt up crazy things like mathematical formulas that describe nature in higher dimensions. Yet even these pale in comparison to the complexity of the squishy gray goop between our ears.
We possess a miracle of nature. Our capacity to recall the past and simulate the future are what separate us from the rest of the animal kingdom. To ask “why” and think deeply are uniquely human abilities. So it is in our very nature to ponder abstract concepts and to create artistic marvels guided by the imagination. One might even argue that it’s our purpose to do so. Yet fundamentalists stubbornly refuse to even consider discussing any of these actions, and actually feel threatened by the notion of discovery. This is where Pressfield draws the distinction between the fundamentalist and the artist.
The Ironic Fundamentalist Fear of Freedom
By now I’m sure you’ve noticed that I’ve quoted Steven Pressfield numerous times. And I can’t help but think that, if a fundamentalist were to read this story, they’d picture Pressfield as some artsy fartsy hippie-dippie dude. But the guy is actually a hardcore, badass ex-Marine who writes war and military novels. In my mind, this lends more credence to the fact that this discrepancy between the archetypal “artist” and “fundamentalist” is an intrinsic part of the human mind— not just a liberal talking point. It can be understood by anyone from any background, so long as they have an open mind. Anyway, let’s continue by unpacking another Pressfield quote.
“[The artist] possesses affluence, stability, enough excess of resource to permit the luxury of self-examination. The artist is grounded in freedom. He is not afraid of it.”
-Steven Pressfield, The War of Art
“Affluence, stability,” and “excess of resource” are not the result of growing up in a rich family or becoming an investment banker. These are obtained by having an open mind and welcoming new ideas. The artist finds stability knowing self-improvement and self-discovery will come naturally while exploring the uncertainties of life. This gives the artist purpose. The unknown is exciting and it makes life interesting.
Artists embrace a deep, far-reaching sense of purpose, and consequently measure success and happiness using criteria other than the number of hours spent on the clock each week.
Fundamentalists, on the other hand, cannot stand uncertainty. They must be told what their purpose is.
And what of freedom? What the fundamentalists so vehemently preach is rather the opposite of freedom. They are the stalwart proponents of American “freedom”, yet wouldn’t dare try to, say, eat with chopsticks, willingly travel beyond their hometown (unless it’s so they can storm the US capitol or assault peaceful protesters), write down their thoughts, paint a picture, read an educational article, or develop a new skill. Perhaps they are “free” to practice the handful of activities they have limited themselves to. But this sounds more like confinement than freedom to me.
This confinement isn’t limited to personal values. It leaks into politics and trickles down to poison those governed under conservative administrations. It’s the same old song and dance, but on a grand scale. When fundamentalists rise to power, they declare “freedom” only when they subjugate others who do not conform to their archaic beliefs. Progressive efforts that mirror the true spirit of humanity are suppressed. Those who champion the egalitarian nature of humanity become pariahs.
Artificial Unintelligence
“A so-called progressive agenda often aligns with forager values: a more equitable distribution of resources, assistance for the vulnerable, respect and autonomy for women (including equal pay and reproductive rights), increased funding for health care and educational programs, acceptance of all religions, and so on. A more conservative agenda often aligns with such agricultural values as individual rights superseding those of the community, paternalistic male control over women’s sexual behavior, expansionist militarism, exaltation of wealth, and monotheism.”
-Christopher Ryan, Civilized to Death: The Price of Progress
It’s important to consider the egalitarian disposition of our forager ancestors because this is how humans lived and behaved for hundreds of thousands of years — far longer than we’ve been living in modern and even ancient civilizations.
So take a moment to consider how backwards the fundamentalist mindset is. “Conservatives” fight to conserve the classic values of their culture. But they fail to understand that these values were only established after being forcefully imposed on free, peaceful people.
And now progressives must implement “radical” policies to steer humanity back to its natural egalitarian state. In fact, their ideas are only radical because we have been prodded so far in the wrong direction under fundamentalist leadership. They’ve created an artificial notion of freedom in an artificial society.
Fundamentalists have essentially built a zoo for themselves, and they populate their cages proudly. They insist that their limited scope of reality is the only possible way to live, while mocking the outside world.
But they wouldn’t dare explore the outside world because they are fearful of it. So they go about their business as usual, doing what they’ve done everyday for as long as they can remember, until it becomes instinct. And anything that violates their instinctive behavior is grounds for a fight-or-flight response. More often than not, they choose to fight. And so the cycle of aggression continues. But this must come to an end in order to stop the adverse effects of the cage they’ve built around society. We must get them in touch with the outside world, because their mess is affecting all of us.
Should we ever wish to make peace with the thick-skulled right-wingers, it is imperative that we convince them to employ critical thought and reflection. Building walls (both metaphorically and literally) cannot be the only way to deal with problems. Whether by example or through statistical, historic, psychological or anthropological proof, we need to show them that their careless traditions are detrimental to a sensitive world that is ever-changing.
Industrialization, mass-production, wasteful consumerism, and the hoarding of wealth and resources may have worked in the United States to rebound from the Great Depression or to rebuild after the World Wars. But we are beyond the need for such practices.
Is There Hope For the Future?
Through science we’ve learned that the archaic methods for generating wealth during the fundamentalists’ golden days are unsustainable, inhumane and dangerous. So in order to correct their carelessness, we must plan for the future, not dwell in the past.
“Life only scrolls in one direction, which is the direction of time, and no matter how far we might manage to go, that invisible wall will always be just behind us, cutting us off from the past, compelling us into the unknown.”
-Edward Snowden, Permanent Record
We may look to the past to learn from our mistakes or to expand on positive ideas. But it is naïve to think that all life can return to how it once was, and even more naïve to think it can stay that way. Fundamentalists yearn for ideals that have been thoroughly proven to be either plain fallacies or severely unjust. And it is abundantly clear that the Earth is suffering from our winner-take-all lifestyle. We have to build a new framework to address modern issues.
This is why we, Pressfield’s “artists”, who understand the reality of humankind, must work tirelessly to promote science, equality, and the creative, peaceful nature of humanity.
When we get in touch with our egalitarian roots, everyone benefits. There is no need for hostility. Even in a capitalist market, the economy flourishes when people — whether consumers or workers — are happy, healthy, and have adequate access to care, resources and opportunity.
For all our sake, we must encourage the fundamentalists to step outside their cage and help us clean up their mess. The more we can prove how deeply connected to the Earth and to one another we are, the wider we open the doors for them. This might even mean disconnecting from them entirely for some time, until they see the stark differences between their unnecessarily hostile reality and that of the real world.
When they drop their stubborn ways and finally open their minds, they will know how vibrant life really can be. It will be like a stick person stepping off the page and seeing in three dimensions for the first time.
But we have a lot of work to do. For now, the reckless fundamentalists will do what they can to return to a nonexistent golden age at the expense of anyone and anything in their way. They blindly charge ahead, reducing reality to a dichotomy of winners and losers.
It’s one thing to defeat the competition and win the game. It’s another to realize there is a game at all, and that it has been rigged from the start. The fact that we are aware of this is reason enough to keep pushing for a better future.
Do not lose hope, fellow artists.
