Do you belive 'True Believers' are manically fanatical inidividuals?
Answer:
Interestingly enough, there is a famous book called "The True Believer", by Eric Hoffer, a philosopher who supported himself by working as a longshoreman. Hoffer believed that the "true believer" was above all an individual who was alienated from the larger society around him or her. In an effort to find some sort of psychological grounding, true believers join some cause that allows them to submerge their selves into something that is larger than any one indivdual. I believe this to be an accurate portrayal; as an example, I would cite Heinrich Himmler, head of the SS in Nazi Germany. He was unable to fight in World War I, unable to hold onto work during the economic hard times between the wars, and a failure as far as relations with the opposite sex were concerned. He latched onto Naziism, which gave him the identity he needed. From being a pedantic but nice boy who visited war widows and went to church, he became the head of the most infamous secret police force in history and an architect of the Holocaust.
Hi Rocky, well I think that it depends what the believer believes in. Even though often believers and beliefs are interrelated some how, most often I have found exceptions to the rule, even within the most radical classifications.
If the believers are true to intolerant principles and beliefs they will be true to them and follow them all the way and hence be intolerant and fanatical. However, if the true believer follows beliefs that contemplate tolerance and provide room for interpretation, which to the best of my knowledge most belief systems do, it is not necessary for them to be fanatical.
I am a true believer in Tolerance. And in fact when I,ve thought about it, I realized that I am most intolerant with intolerance itself, and so once I noticed this contradiction, I learned to be more tolerant with intolerance, since after all, Who is perfect? Who does not "squrew" up? or "down"? when part of us, our biological part, is designed to pursue "squrewing" at all cost.
Yet as a person I am capable of understanding what I am, and discern the prejudices I have learned or inherited or are just part of my humanity, accept it, and make decisions about what and when to do something.
In the same way true believers should reason their belief system and then they would understand that often, those fanatical components within them, are freebies, glosses added by other interpreters who themselves had made an incorrect and extreme blind reading of the texts, of ideas they believe in because they where uncapable of discerning the text or ideas from their own prejudices.
Consequently, true believers are as fanatical as their belief systems, so if they follow interpretations or versions of the belief system based on intolerance and prejudice they will result in fantical attitudes and behaviours but if they do not follow any blind interpretation of the belief system, then it will not be so.
Best regards
Santiago
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