The Mind of a Fundamentalist

Thanks to Robert Cunningham for sending me the link to Rachael Kohn's interviews entitled "The Mind of a Fundamentalist." About midway through the interview Shahid Najeeb makes an interesting observation:

The mind of fundamentalism proliferates like a cancer, without regard for anything other than its own scriptures. It lives and feeds only on these scriptures, which are fundamental inscriptions of personal aspirations. The devout believe their devotion and nothing else. Dictators believe their own propaganda. So one can’t help but wonder about the driven nature of these beliefs.

It’s as if the fundamentalist’s very life depends on the fierce way the beliefs are grasped. And there might actually be a lot of truth to this, for it might be that at heart, the forcible and persistent insistence of the fundamentalist’s truth at the heart of it, lies an unconscious feeling of the truth that may be, just maybe, he is quite mistaken. It might be that he knows at some level that he is hanging on to a container that has no content, and if this container’s devoid of any content, then the fundamentalist is hanging over a schism or a chasm, I beg your pardon, of meaninglessness and insignificance which is absolutely terrifying.