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In my view, paranoia and fundamentalism so often go hand in hand. Take internet conspiracy culture as a prime example of this. One can find no shortage of youtube videos pages and webpages full of rantings and raving about "occult" and "pagan" symbolism being everywhere in pop culture. The cranks, lunatics and opportunists peddling this paranoia would insist that these symbols are mendaciously hidden in plain sight by a cabal of dark-evil-elite conspirators who have infiltrated mass media and big entertainment and are thus using their influence to openly gloat about all the secret occult knowledge they supposedly possess. And go to any video on youtube about any spiritual or religious topic imaginable and you'll see the comments section full of the same type of rabidly-incoherent, frothing-at-the-mouth rants, typically colored by a motley assortment of out-of-context Bible quotations, often in the form of just one or two isolated verses.
The central paranoia of the Christian fundamentalist in particular, is that every type of expression out there in the big bad world of pop culture, media and shared ideas, is an affront to or an attack upon the paranoid person's adopted version of whatever variant of Christianity they happen to adhere to. And of course there are those snowflakes who claim not to follow any particular domination; in their own words their rationalization might be something along the lines of, "I just follow the Bible, plain and simple!" Well, quite simple expect for the annoying fact that there are now more than 40,000 different ways of interpreting that "plain and simple" body of scripture. If this many disagreements do exist, then which one is correct? By what standard is an interpretation correct or incorrect? Who exactly should be vested with the authority of determining which interpretation is the most correct? (Entire massive bloody wars have been fought over this very question) Come on now, if the Bible was a clear and unambiguous message any average Joe could easy understand, then why isn't there just one Christian sect? The clear answer is that anyone claiming that they follow "nothing but the Bible" is either totally full of shit or they have self-deluded their mind into a pretzel.
Essentially, modern Westerners are supremely averse to genuine spirituality, and this is especially true for the most fervently "religious" Westerners. They are in fact the greatest enemies of spirituality. Modern modern people are materialists in one form or another. At least secular modern people are just ambivalent about or lackadaisically dismissive of spirituality, as opposed to wanting to wage "holy" wars against it. Literalist Christian fundamentalists are materialists and empiricists when it comes to everything in existence except the what they believe their scriptures say. And even then they glean a mostly-materialist worldview from the Bible. Jesus Christ **had** to have been a literal historical person, and the events depicted in the Gospel narrative **had** to have happened literally, word-for-word. The oh-so-lofty concepts of allegory and archetypes be damned!
People in general tend to be fearful toward what they cannot (or simply refuse to) understand. And thus they may project and lash out all their inner insecurities and psychic impurities toward anything reeking of higher wisdom. Think of the envious student who speaks using the worst of profanities against the teacher who flunked them for poor performance. And with the modern cultural take on Western individualism, so many people are cursed with a puerile entitlement complex that beams into their minds the notion that they are "owed" things for the mere feat of existing as an **individual**. And thus, in the realm of metaphysical matters, the Truth should simply fall into one's lap, regardless of their own particularity moral character, in-born temperament or level of accumulated merit. Nothing should be rightfully earned through effort and struggle; everything should be freely given out, because reasons.
The age-old Master/Apprentice dynamic has been pissed upon many times over by the hyper-entitled man/woman-child Westerner. And perhaps we could state that the 60s counterculture "revolution" only fanned the flames of this noxious adolescent mentality; everything thereafter became all about "me, me, me, me, myself, and I." The postwar (WWII) economic bonanza, coupled with the rapid advance in material high-technology, was the gasoline that made these flames 100x higher. And now with the internet, where everyone had all the information (or porn) they could ever want at their fingertips, the demand for instant answers to everything is even more magnified than before.
The self-righteous fundamentalist feels a seething rage toward any type of religious knowledge that is directly out of his reach. According his passion-ridden materialist mind, if **he** doesn't see it then it simply isn't there. And anyone who does insist it is indeed there must have some kind of hidden, nefarious agenda up his sleeve. Obvious the fundamentalist's personal God is an egalitarian and democrat who freely puts out all the secrets of the universe for anyone to effortlessly comprehend without any serious effort required. Within the paradigm of modern materialist science, if the scientist (in all likelihood, a glorified technician or doctor of rote memorization) can't read something with the instruments available to the practitioners of his field, then the proposed phenomenon in question simply doesn't exist, rather than being something that may or may not exist.
Homo Hubris is the man of the current era.
The central paranoia of the Christian fundamentalist in particular, is that every type of expression out there in the big bad world of pop culture, media and shared ideas, is an affront to or an attack upon the paranoid person's adopted version of whatever variant of Christianity they happen to adhere to. And of course there are those snowflakes who claim not to follow any particular domination; in their own words their rationalization might be something along the lines of, "I just follow the Bible, plain and simple!" Well, quite simple expect for the annoying fact that there are now more than 40,000 different ways of interpreting that "plain and simple" body of scripture. If this many disagreements do exist, then which one is correct? By what standard is an interpretation correct or incorrect? Who exactly should be vested with the authority of determining which interpretation is the most correct? (Entire massive bloody wars have been fought over this very question) Come on now, if the Bible was a clear and unambiguous message any average Joe could easy understand, then why isn't there just one Christian sect? The clear answer is that anyone claiming that they follow "nothing but the Bible" is either totally full of shit or they have self-deluded their mind into a pretzel.
Essentially, modern Westerners are supremely averse to genuine spirituality, and this is especially true for the most fervently "religious" Westerners. They are in fact the greatest enemies of spirituality. Modern modern people are materialists in one form or another. At least secular modern people are just ambivalent about or lackadaisically dismissive of spirituality, as opposed to wanting to wage "holy" wars against it. Literalist Christian fundamentalists are materialists and empiricists when it comes to everything in existence except the what they believe their scriptures say. And even then they glean a mostly-materialist worldview from the Bible. Jesus Christ **had** to have been a literal historical person, and the events depicted in the Gospel narrative **had** to have happened literally, word-for-word. The oh-so-lofty concepts of allegory and archetypes be damned!
People in general tend to be fearful toward what they cannot (or simply refuse to) understand. And thus they may project and lash out all their inner insecurities and psychic impurities toward anything reeking of higher wisdom. Think of the envious student who speaks using the worst of profanities against the teacher who flunked them for poor performance. And with the modern cultural take on Western individualism, so many people are cursed with a puerile entitlement complex that beams into their minds the notion that they are "owed" things for the mere feat of existing as an **individual**. And thus, in the realm of metaphysical matters, the Truth should simply fall into one's lap, regardless of their own particularity moral character, in-born temperament or level of accumulated merit. Nothing should be rightfully earned through effort and struggle; everything should be freely given out, because reasons.
The age-old Master/Apprentice dynamic has been pissed upon many times over by the hyper-entitled man/woman-child Westerner. And perhaps we could state that the 60s counterculture "revolution" only fanned the flames of this noxious adolescent mentality; everything thereafter became all about "me, me, me, me, myself, and I." The postwar (WWII) economic bonanza, coupled with the rapid advance in material high-technology, was the gasoline that made these flames 100x higher. And now with the internet, where everyone had all the information (or porn) they could ever want at their fingertips, the demand for instant answers to everything is even more magnified than before.
The self-righteous fundamentalist feels a seething rage toward any type of religious knowledge that is directly out of his reach. According his passion-ridden materialist mind, if **he** doesn't see it then it simply isn't there. And anyone who does insist it is indeed there must have some kind of hidden, nefarious agenda up his sleeve. Obvious the fundamentalist's personal God is an egalitarian and democrat who freely puts out all the secrets of the universe for anyone to effortlessly comprehend without any serious effort required. Within the paradigm of modern materialist science, if the scientist (in all likelihood, a glorified technician or doctor of rote memorization) can't read something with the instruments available to the practitioners of his field, then the proposed phenomenon in question simply doesn't exist, rather than being something that may or may not exist.
Homo Hubris is the man of the current era.
