Zealots
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Zealots
A rebellion is always legal in the first person, such as "our rebellion." It is only in the third person - "their rebellion" - that it becomes illegal. -- Benjamin Franklin, 1776
The original Zealots were a group of radical nationalist Jews who fought the state of Rome, who they saw as an alien occupying force. They sought to destroy foreign rule by assassination and violent overthrow of the government. They succeeded, held Jerusalem for a few years, then were brutally repressed by the Roman army.
Today, ironically, radical Islamicists fight Israel declaring them an alien occupying force. They are often called zealots in the West. It probably infuriates them all the more that a word first used to describe Jews is used to describe them.
Furthering the irony is that the word zealot is neither Hebrew nor Latin in origin, but Greek. At the time, Judea had been greatly Hellenized. Zelos -- zeal -- was the Greek word from which it etymologically derived: eagerness and ardent interest in pursuit of something. Originally this was thought a virtue by the Greeks.
The Latins, believing themselves more stoic, disciplined and sensible, believed self-control was better than passionate displays of zeal. They denigrated the term etymologically in favor of more disciplined and orderly behavior. In Latin terms, a zealot is anyone who is fanatically partisan.
According to Webster's etymology, a fanatic was "inspired by a deity, frenzied" -- the word derives from the Latin fanum -- temple. Therefore it took on a religious overtone. Certainly the Zealots would have agreed, and this makes the word applicable to any radical fundamentalist of any credo.
Partisan holds its origin in Latin pars -- division, part. It was someone of a faction. As Webster's defines partisan, "1 : a firm adherent to a party , faction, cause, or person; especially : one exhibiting blind, prejudiced, and unreasoning allegiance."
Thus it was deemed to be illogical. Foolhardy. Mad. Your enthusiasm obviously was due to some minority-held belief that got out of control.
Thereafter, it became applied to those of the minority faction who refused to submit to the majority. Regardless of repressive tyranny by the majority or wrong-headedness of the minority did not matter.
As Webster's continues: "2 a : a member of a body of detached light troops making forays and harassing an enemy b : a member of a guerrilla band operating within enemy lines."
Some people do not take defeat as the end of their struggle. As we well know, there are those to fight to the grave -- or beyond if they can help it.
Not Letting Go
From hell's heart I stab at thee; for hate's sake I spit my last breath at thee. Ye damned whale. -- Captain Ahab, Moby Dick
So when we see a zealot, we can look with sympathy at the heroic plight of the fighting underdog, or we can look at the insanity of someone who just will not let go of their principles to make peace. Both can be true from different contexts.
Captain Ahab saw the whale as behemoth:
Starbuck: To be enraged with a dumb brute that acted out of blind instinct is blasphemous.
Captain Ahab: Speak not to me of blasphemy, man; I'd strike the sun if it insulted me. Look ye, Starbuck, all visible objects are but as pasteboard masks. Some inscrutable yet reasoning thing puts forth the molding of their features. The white whale tasks me; he heaps me. Yet he is but a mask. 'Tis the thing behind the mask I chiefly hate; the malignant thing that has plagued mankind since time began; the thing that maws and mutilates our race, not killing us outright but letting us live on, with half a heart and half a lung. (Moby Dick, source: IMDB.com)
When we refuse to give in, when we refuse to give up a struggle, is this folly, or is this courage? Is it wisdom, or is it lunatic insanity? Often that depends on the context.
Obviously if you are the repressed minority, you might see that being a zealot is your only avenue of continued expression. Sometimes, even speaking in your own native language could be seen as a sign of zealotous rebellion against the majority.
What constitutes a zealot therefore is as hard as what constitutes a terrorist -- one man's freedom fighter is another man's lawless rabble. One woman's voice of honest outrage is another person's mindless shrieking harpie.
At least, on the face of things. The question comes down to more subtle terms, which of course demogogues on all sides of the body politic debate endlessly. Zealots often like to make matters simply dualistic -- good or evil, for or against us -- others try to see various shades of grey or various colors and mixes.
When we brand someone as a zealot, we should be careful to do so, because it might be our own prejudices, frenzied religious (or anti-religious) beliefs, our own partisan knee-jerk reactions, and our own blind folly that colors the opposition as such.
If we wish to argue about principles, we might need to acknowledge the virtues and veracity of various parties.
We might need to acknowledge what others call evil in the world. We do not need to agree with such assessments, yet we should listen to at least understand why the belief has set in, even if we deem it a mania. Simply scoffing and dismissing it will not necessarily break down the fanaticism. Keeping silent certainly will not stop it.
We need to keep in mind if they act like Captain Ahab, leading the ship of our society around the Norway maelstrom and around perdition's flames in nihilistic, apocalyptic chase of what they have demonized.
If they manage to succeed, we need to watch that they do not now turn their minds to the next conquest and the next and the next, expanding what they demonize, witchhunting whatever they then feel needs to be decimated. This is what turned the French Revolution into the Reign of Terror, and it is what turns the American Dream of Manifest Destiny into a plan of a Great Satan seemingly bent on world domination.
History and Etymology of Zealotry
When we look at the Romans and the Zealots, we can clearly see who militarily and politically won that war. Jerusalem was taken and the Temple was destroyed. Yet the war had come about because of relentless taxation and brutal repression of the Jews, who had earlier enjoyed privileged status under their original contract with Rome.
How many times have broken promises, high unemployment, repression, and prejudice turned willing employees, vassals, citizens and soldiers into an ardent, organized and militant opposition?
If we are seeking the meme behind zealot we need to focus again on the original Greek zelos -- eagerness and ardent interest in pursuit of something.
In the United States, this was why the founding fathers guaranteed life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.
So that the people of the nation would pursue -- with zeal -- something for the good of all society and all mankind.
Because they knew that if they tried to contain such zeal, the American experiment would fail.
Zealots as Slaves of their Memes
I want you to go to the window, open it, stick your head out and yell: "I'm as mad as hell, and I'm not going to take this anymore." -- Howard Beale, Network
In the world of memetics, zealots are created when a virulent meme or memeplex takes root in a society, compelling its adherents to conflict automatically and dogmatically against competing memes. The adherents, blinded by the meme's reinforcing internal logic, cannot free themselves to a neutral point of view to consider other actions than the defense of the meme.
Howard Beale was tragically a zealot that was as trapped in his own mindset as the people he was trying to wake up, shake up and rally. He did not truly succeed in elevating the public's consciousness. He simply became a curious novelty. In the end, they turned their televisions elsewhere and true zealots, in the form of live assassination squads, replaced him.
Seeing how the media today airs tapes of hostage beheadings, the movie is eerily prophetic.
The zealot's life, their mind, and their actions are surrendered to the service of the meme. This precept can be found within such books as The Lucifer Principle.
However, other people might simply call it plain old fashioned human stupidity, such as in Understanding Stupidity.
In this, the author describes stupidity as "a mentality which is considered to be informed, deliberate and maladaptive."
It is important to note each word, as they contribute to the zealot's mindset.
They are informed. While we can dismiss a zealot as ignorant or uneducated, the opposite may be true. They could have advanced degrees. All their knowledge -- their additional reinforcement of their memes -- might even lead them to being utterly more stupid.
To test whether someone is a prisoner of their memes, we can attempt education, to show another point of view. If it is rejected based upon knowledge of counterexamples and logical and emotional arguments, then this is an informed conscious choice.
They are deliberate. Someone who is negative-thinking who accidentally ends up in a conflict -- say two people who bump into each other coming through a doorway -- often looks to see if there was any deliberation to cause the event. If so, they take it as an affront, injurious and insulting. If someone takes to purposefully cause a confrontation, they are deliberately offending the other person. So we have to question the motive of a zealot: are they deliberating their choices, consciously or unconsciously? And if they are, is there a point of intercession in that mental process where other thoughts can interrupt the internal dialogue and insert other possibilities?
They are maladaptive. Darwin got it wrong. Humans, unlike many "dumber" species, do not always adapt to their environment. In fact, there are no more stubborn, determined, anti-adapters than humans. Unlike other animals that simply build nests or at most use simple tools, humans have decided that they wish environment to adapt to them. And when it won't, they still want it to.
This leads to maladaptive behavior, when a person's desires and actions towards those desires are predictively not in their best interest. Specifically, when your actions towards your goals will actually produce negative consequences greater than the benefit of the goal.
The person might have a subjective schema which places a certain choice, a meme of an ideal, in value above external mass subjective societal beliefs. It might lead to their death, but it might be for a greater cause.
Countless millions have fought and died for such philosophies. Not incidentally, such beliefs have also led to the extermination of others who did not adhere to such beliefs, even when such mass-extermination led to the worsening of life for all the survivors.
When someone is unable to act outside of their maladaptive schema, when only self-destructive behavior will satisfy their memetic principles, their entire self, or some crucial part of it, is wrapped up in the construct of who they are and what they feel is important and true.
If they hear they are wrong, and that their folly will lead to their doom, for whatever reason they are convinced that's better than changing their mind.
Thus, to break stupidity, the needless self-destructive acts at the service of a virulent, hostility-provoking meme, is a problem as ancient as humankind.
One of the ways to break the cycle is to elevate the discussion from one of specific intractibles to one of the higher basis for the decision-making. To point out the underlying causes from an abstract point-of-view without getting bogged down in the specifics of the present argument.
When people become aware of their metaconversations and decision-making processes, they stand a better chance of making another decision from a conscious, potentially more neutral point of view.
That still might not guarantee they won't just be stupid about it. But it's the best shot you have.
It must be admitted that there are times when win-lose close-ended situations lead to competition and survival-of-the-fittest thinking. Zealots try to paint arguments in win-lose, winner-take-all scenarios. If they can't achieve a win, they are even willing to sabotage their oppnent with a pyrrhic and costly lost-win (do as much damage before you fail), or lose-lose (if I can't win, then no one can).
Their memes are often dependent avoiding win-win no matter what. To allow the opponent to win easily is anathema. Their opponent should never win, even it it might benefit us.
They are threatened, and therefore wish to destroy all other competing memes. They engage in meme warfare. Of course, in natural systems, unbridled focus and desire for absolute success is positionally untenable. Memes that try to expand beyond cultural bounds often find natural limits, and if they refuse to limit growth, they fracture and create diverging sub-memes. They can become inversions of their original intent or meaning, or they might otherwise alter from their "pure" form rapidly because of their overly-broad demographic and intellectual bounds. Thusly, they often simply get swept aside by more contextually-appropriate competing memes of smaller scale and superior effectiveness.
A zealot might be combatted by showing that the ultimate point of their struggle is thusly not in the meme's best interest. It would be better to keep the meme pure by limiting its extent and application, rather than allowing it to spread to such a wide and diffuse application that it loses its coherence and meaning.
As a final note, it behooves oneself to recognize their own stupidities and follies. It is best to look in the mirror before tackling our foes.
Breeding Zealotry from a Young Age
Today, many zealots have been brought up in a culture of violence, anger, frustration, and negativity. Their mental state can be addressed as one of any number of mental disorders or culture-bound syndromes. Yet before we simply diagnose endless supplies of pharmaceuticals, or tell people to get over themselves, or that they are stupid, let's dig a little deeper, to see what might be at the heart of such problems.
A typical 25-year-old Iraqi has not known any long stint of peace in their time. If they were born in 1980, they were born on the dawn of the Iran-Iraq War (1980-1988). The next two years (1988-1990) were spent in brutal repression of Kurdish and Shi'ite opposition groups. No sooner were these concluded, but there was the first Persian Gulf War spanning from the invasion of Kuwait to Operation Desert Storm (1990-1991). Thereafter, additional revolts and uprisings of Kurdish and Shi'ite sects, and the establishment of the "No Fly Zones" kept the country in a state of sitzkrieg, with constant low-level fighting on the ground, and aerial missile strikes and bombings for a decade (1991-2003). Then, of course, there was invasion under Operation Iraqi Freedom (2003), and ongoing operations in the country (2003-).
We can argue whether they "deserved" such treatment or not, but this does not alter the basic facts: a 25-year old person has not known, ever, any true time of complete peace in the country during their lifetime.
One could also argue that periods of consistent or intermittant conflict go back through the entire 20th century, from Arab-Israeli Wars, repeated Kurdish uprisings, back to the 1920-1922 insurrections against British rule.
So you have full-grown young adults, their parents, and their grandparents, all having a history of years of war, years of zealotous nationalist, religious, and tribal conflict.
Turning Zealots into Rational People Working in Pursuit of Happiness
...this was the object of the Declaration of Independence. not to find out new principles, or new arguments, never before thought of, not merely to say things which had never been said before; but to place before mankind the common sense of the subject, in terms so plain and firm as to command their assent, and to justify ourselves in the independent stand we [were] compelled to take. -- Thomas Jefferson
What do experts recommend in such cases?
"To break the cycle of violence, one must sacrifice willingly." -- Judge Mike Pinsky
A zealot has to give up something they hold dear. You might have to offer something first. Concede a logical point. Agree that their emotional feelings are based on sincere frustrations.
To successfully negociate with someone that a life of peace is better than a martyr's death or other lose-lose behavior is difficult. In some cases, it will prove impossible.
There is no guarantee any attempt at engagement will be accepted or even respected. Be prepared for rejection, spite, or even violence in the most extreme situations. It might take repeated efforts to earn trust, respect or even attention with someone who sees you as a "traitor" or "evil" or a "Liberal."
It would be best to sacrifice your own invective in reply. Keep it positive, polite, logical and firm. Avoid your own trigger factors that set you off. Be aware of them, and disengage from the desire to throttle someone -- even if you feel they really deserve it.
In the case of less-drastic differences of philosophical debate, one would need to be willing to concede points and perhaps even speak from a neutral point of view to engender a more moderate mutual understanding. Avoid baits or temptations to resort to ad hominem attacks. Focus on the logical topic, and the goal that you hope to achieve.
You can address human emotions, but do so in the form of respectful open-ended questions to let them express themselves. Avoid presuming to know or even understand their feelings or mind. Recognize them, and don't talk past them. You can even politely ask for them to calm their emotions to continue discussions. There is no requirement to suffer psychological abuse. In fact, consider all the possible logical fallacies you could commit, and be aware of your trends or bad habits which could set off a zealot.
In terms of a technology zealot, you might have to admit when something other than your chosen brand-name, installed base, or new-fangled notion is logically and economically superior. At least within a context of its appropriate application and use.
In cases of hostile expression, you might need to work on anger management internally.
"People who 'vent' their anger are really practicing acting out their anger instead of doing something to cope with it," Waller says.
Thus they exercise their demons and make them stronger, rather than exorcize them and overcome them. Such cycles should be interrupted by, if nothing else, a good joke now and then. However, caution should be used if a joke might only infuriate someone who was bent on serious discourse.
If you are subjected to verbal hostility, anger diffusion and conflict resolution becomes necessary. This is true whether you are trying to build a work team in an office, or trying to run a functional government.
In more intractable and true violence on an individual basis, look to the response in the United States after the Columbine shootings. Breaking the Cycle was founded to focus on stopping anger and fear which lead to violence before it breeds too deep by teaching nonviolent conflict resolution. They published Why Forgive and Be Not Afraid. The former speaks about letting go of those pent-up passions. The latter speaks leaving aside the blind fear -- or anger -- that keeps us in a state of emotions unable to move on.
Workplace violence also needs to be addressed. The phrase 'go postal' occurred in the 1980s to describe workplace violence.
On more collective and societal issues, one can turn to win-win game theory, negociating strategies, and respect and observance of the rule of law by its fair and even application, based in basic civic and cultural ethics.
Also communally, it is possible for moderators or supporters to provide a feedback loop to assist in proving an assertion. However, recognize that many zealots can then turn around and paint someone a "traitor" for refusing to support them. While external mediation is accepted practice, recognize that a true zealot might be willing to stand against the entire world, or die trying.
