Prioritizing our 'problems'

When David Brooks writes the following:

The flap over Gibson's movie reminds us that religion can be a dangerous thing. It can be coarsened into gore and bloodshed and used to foment hatred. But we're not living in Afghanistan under the Taliban. Our general problem is not that we're too dogmatic. Our more common problems come from the other end of the continuum. Americans in the 21st century are more likely to be divorced from any sense of a creedal order, ignorant of the moral traditions that have come down to us through the ages and detached from the sense that we all owe obligations to a higher authority.

You have to wonder what world Brooks lives in.

Of course, Brooks need look only a short distance from the New York Times Building -- to the rubble of Ground Zero -- for evidence that dogmatic religious zealotry is more than just dangerous, it constitutes a major problem for modern American society.

Of course, you could also find that same kind of zealotry in play back in April 1995 in Oklahoma City. Eric Rudolph's rampage was only one of many such acts of domestic terrorism inspired by dogmatic religiosity.

Now, granted, these are not what one would call "common" problems. But given the toll in bloodshed, lives, and torn social fabric, one certainly could conclude they constitute a far more "pressing" problem.

There's a certain validity to Brooks' point: There's nothing really admirable about mushy-mindedness in any aspect of our collective thinking, and Gibran-esque religiosity certainly fits that description.

However, I have yet to have observed anyone committing acts of violence or other forms of criminality after becoming a devotee of Deepak Chopra. No one has blown up any government offices after reading Mitch Albom. There haven't been any attacks on Jewish day-centers from readers of Scott Peck.

The same cannot be said of dogmatic, right-wing Christians who have been told that killing abortion doctors is morally justified by any number of fundamentalist "thinkers," or that putting abortion clinics to the torch is God's work.

The difference between most mushy pseudo-religionists like Albom and religious dogmatists like Mel Gibson is fairly simple: the former blur lines and make leaps of logic that inspire a lazy and thoughtless "spirituality," while the latter insist on a Manichean dualism that inspires a judgemental and divisive religiosity.

And that extreme dualism lies at the root of such "common" problems as racism, anti-Semitism, conspiracism, and especially terrorism, both domestic and international. It is also, ultimately, the driving force that gives rise to totalitarianism.

By comparison, mushy-headed Mitch Albomists look positively appealing.