MK forum

I guess it's like a trigger for me--can't read too far along and still breathe.

I'll have to write my own version, I guess.

Ok. Now talk amoungst yourselves.



Religious Fundamentalism could soon be treated as mental illness.

Kathleen Taylor, a neurologist at Oxford University, said that recent developments suggest that we will soon be able to treat religious fundamentalism and other forms of ideological beliefs potentially harmful to society as a form of mental illness. She made the assertion during a talk at the Hay Literary Festival in Wales on Wednesday. She said that radicalizing ideologies may soon be viewed not as being of personal choice or free will but as a category of mental disorder. She said new developments in neuroscience could make it possible to consider extremists as people with mental illness rather than criminals.
She told The Times of London: "One of the surprises may be to see people with certain beliefs as people who can be treated. Someone who has for example become radicalized to a cult ideology -- we might stop seeing that as a personal choice that they have chosen as a result of pure free will and may start treating it as some kind of mental disturbance."

Taylor admits that the scope of what could end up being labelled "fundamentalist" is expansive. She continued: "I am not just talking about the obvious candidates like radical Islam or some of the more extreme cults. I am talking about things like the belief that it is OK to beat your children. These beliefs are very harmful but are not normally categorized as mental illness. In many ways that could be a very positive thing because there are no doubt beliefs in our society that do a heck of a lot of damage, that really do a lot of harm."

The Huffington Post reports Taylor warns about the moral-ethical complications that could arise.
In her book "The Brain Supremacy," she writes of the need "to be careful when it comes to developing technologies which can slip through the skull to directly manipulate the brain. They cannot be morally neutral, these world-shaping tools; when the aspect of the world in question is a human being, morality inevitably rears its hydra heads. Technologies which profoundly change our relationship with the world around us cannot simply be tools, to be used for good or evil, if they alter our basic perception of what good and evil are."

The moral-ethical dimension arises from the predictable tendency when acting on the problem, armed with a new technology, to apply to the label "fundamentalist" only to our ideological opponents, while failing to perceive the "fundamentalism" in ourselves. From the perspective of the Western mind, for instance, the tendency to equate "fundamentalism" exclusively with radical Islamism is too tempting. But how much less "fundamentalist" than an Osama bin Laden is a nation of capitalist ideologues carpet bombing civilian urban areas in Laos, Cambodia and North Korea?

The jihadist's obsession with defending his Islamic ideological world view which leads him to perpetrate and justify such barbaric acts as the Woolwich murder are of the same nature as the evangelical obsession with spreading the pseudo-religious ideology of capitalism which led to such horrendous crimes as the murder of hundreds of thousands of civilians in four years of carpet bombing operations by the Nixon administration caught in a vice grip of anti-communist paranoia.

The power to control the mind will tend too readily to be used as weapon against our jihadist enemies while justifying the equally irrational and murderously harmful actions we term innocously "foreign policy."
Some analysts are thus convinced that neuroscientists will be adopting a parochial and therefore ultimately counterproductive approach if they insist on identifying particular belief systems characteristic of ideological opponents as the primary subject for therapeutic manipulation.

On a much larger and potentially more fruitful scale is the recognition that the entire domain of religious beliefs, political convictions, patriotic nationalist fervor are in themselves powerful platforms for nurturing "Us vs Them" paranoid delusional fantasies which work out destructively in a 9/11 attack or a Hiroshima/Nagasaki orgy of mass destruction.

What we perceive from our perspective as our legitimate self-defensive reaction to the psychosis of the enemy, is from the perspective of the same enemy our equally malignant psychotic self-obsession.
The Huffington Post reports that this is not the first time Taylor has written a book about extremism and fundamentalism. In 2006, she wrote a book about mind control titled "Brainwashing: The Science of Thought Control," in which she examined the techniques that cultic groups use to influence victims.

She said: "We all change our beliefs of course. We all persuade each other to do things; we all watch advertising; we all get educated and experience [religions.] Brainwashing, if you like, is the extreme end of that; it's the coercive, forceful, psychological torture type."

She notes correctly that "brainwashing" which embraces all the subtle and not-so-subtle ways "we make people think things that might not be good for them, that they might not otherwise have chosen to think," is a much more pervasive social phenomenon than we are willing to recognize. As social animals we are all victims of culturally induced brainwashing whose effectiveness correlates with our inability to think outside the box of our given acculturation.

Hmm ... very interesting, and worthy of some thought.

As long as this isn't used as an excuse to help people avoid taking responsibility.

When I reference the fact that many child abusers were themselves abused as children, what I often say is, the trauma of their childhood may help explain their criminal actions, but it does NOT excuse them.

As frail human beings with very impressionable minds, yes, we can all be influenced and manipulated rather easily, and sometimes the methods chosen to alter our thinking and behavior are less than honorable. I hate acknowledging the fact that life is a constant struggle between people who seek strength and power by casting their spell of influence over their fellow human beings, and those who struggle to keep thinking for themselves and choosing their own beliefs and opinions.

But it's a fact, isn't it.

I do think that someone who are brainwashed have some mental issues. Whether it be because they are isolated or damaged I don't think it does take away their responsibility but more of an explanation, per se, of the apathy and damage.

I recently saw a facebook post of a man "spanking' his child. The child was over his lap and he had his arm raised in mid-swing of a beating. The next photo was of three young men dressed like gangbangers (doo-rags, dropped pants, etc.). The caption was "if we have more of this (indicating the beating) we'd have less of this." It really makes me sick and many people commented on the photo in agreement. How can this be? The sickness that permeates the fundamentalist movement is so terrifying to me.

NTM advocated beatings. There is no way around that. They preached it during my tenure. The apartments had thin walls. They followed The Strong-Willed Child amoungst other writings. I saw parents who didn't believe in beatings being berated. People were encouraged to beat the children in their care. Are we so weak that we allow ourselves to be convinced that something so fundamentally wrong is ok? I'd call this a mental deficiency at least. How can NTMers allow themselves to be convinced that the abuse that was rampant and damaged so many people can be swept away like so much African, Panamania, Brazilain, Venazuelan, PNG, Philippine, Indonesian dust. (The list goes on but my heart is breaking.)

It's an interesting article. However my humble opinion is that the average Fundamentalist is similar to the average Evangelical, the average Catholic, the average Hindu e.t.c. and they are not of the extreme religious behaviour that ruins the reputation of whichever faith they belong to. They are probably more concerned with raising their children well and providing for their families.
Alas extremists of any faith tend to grab the headlines and ruin the many good aspects of what the average adherent practises.

I shall now stop musing on matters of faith, from my position of lingering doubts

Bemused,

I think the "standard" is fluid. I have so much regret and shame in what I believed coming out of NTM/NTBI. How I treated people! How wrong I was! There is nothing "average" about NTM and other missions of years ago. (I cannot speak of them currently.) When people ask me about my background I tell them I was raised in a cult commune. This is not your average Southern Baptist Sunday churchgoer.

In addition, there are a lot of fundamentalists who talk a good game, but they don't follow through. They post all this crap on facebook and yet they don't touch their children.

If only we had been so lucky.

Yes, Raz, that is VERY clear.
And I agree.