Hi. (01)
I unfortunately haven't had time to track this thread and discussion
closely enough, so if what I'm about to say has been covered already,
please forgive the repetition. (02)
I think it would be useful to unpack and distinguish between
"fundamentalism" and "fanaticism"--both regarding beliefs and related
actions which are fueled by and enacted in the name of belief. (03)
Elli Wiesel, Nobel Peace Prize winner and one of the early survivors
of the Holocaust to write and speak out about the truth behind the
horrors of the Holocaust and the rise of Nazism, has recently
written and spoken a lot about "fanaticism" as being the real enemy
much of the west (and other parts of the world) must fight against.
There has been a serious rise in anti-Semitism, along with
anti-Zionism and anti-Israel media and press over the past few years,
since the start of the current Palestinian Intifada--and this has
been especially pronounced in Europe (as well as in the Islamic
world). There was a major roundtable meeting in Europe at the end of
2002 which dealt specifically with this issue, as well as
Islamophobia. I can't remember if Wiesel was a participant or just
cited by several of the participants, but you may want to take a look
at this (which I found in doing a google search on "Wiesel and
fanaticism") at:
http://eumc.eu.int/eumc/material/pub/RT3/Report-RT3-en.pdf (04)
A question to ask is whether all fanatics are fundamentalists (or
vice versa, which I don't feel is necessarily the case). There is
also an interesting issue about "knowledge-making rights" (i.e., who
has the right within and among certain communities of practice to
create or "make" knowledge--and who is seen as not having this
right?). This issue actually pervades much more than just the
fundamentalism and fanaticism discussion--it's a definite issue
within and among scientific disciplines, and I suspect it may be an
issue in certain arts and music communities, as well. (05)
When I was working on the staff of the former Institute for Research
on Learning (IRL) in the 1990's, I learned about early IRL folks
(Etienne Wenger and also Jean Lave) having coined the terms "situated
learning," "legitimate peripheral participation" and "communities of
practice." Their first major book on this topic is "Situated
Learning: Legitimate Peripheral Participation" (1991, Cambridge
Press)--and there have since been several books and lots of papers
and articles about the communities of practice concepts in both
education, learning sciences and management/organizational
development and business (John Seely Brown and Paul Duguid's great
book, "The Social Life of Information" is from this same community). (06)
I mention this because we are dealing with a learning issue re. both
fundamentalism and fanaticism--and there are definite boundaries
within communities of practice within both of these areas where not
everyone has knowledge-making or legitimate peripheral participation
rights to learn... (07)
Anyway, if people want more background about the whole question of
anti-Semitism (including J.P Sartre's classic book, "Anti-Semite and
Jew" on this topic), and broader related topics, I suggest taking a
look at the Simon Wisenthal Center's Museum of Tolerance web site (a
museum in L.A. well worth viisiting) at:
http://www.wiesenthal.com/mot/index.cfm, Spielberg's Survivors of the
Shoah Visual History Foundation http://www.vhf.org, and the U.S.
Holocaus Memorial t Museum http://www.ushmm.org/. These are among
the richest archives and web-based resources we have that deal with
many of these issues and questions, with hopes that "Never Again" may
continue to be said by those in our and our children's lifetimes. (08)
-Ted
=============================================================== (09)
>On 11 Jan 2004 at 15:37, Chris Dent wrote:
>
>[...]
>>
>> Many people who complain about fundamentalist thinking have
>> problems with it because they (the complainers) have the mistaken
> > belief that there is a form of thought that is not based on faith and
>> that that form is closer to some absolute form of correct. That belief
>> is fundamentalism in a nutshell.
>>
>> It's faith all the way down, whether your god is Science or Shiva.
>
>(Ahem) I wish to disagree.
>It isn't faith all the way down, it's reason.
>
>Here we are in the universe...
>
>Either there is something beyond or there isn't.
>If there is then we'll be ignorant of it.
>If there isn't something beyond then there isn't, so we don't have to
>worry.
>Therefore, we reason that at one side there might be ignorance.
>At what point does that acknowledgement require faith? Surely it is
>reasoned?
>
>Within what universe we know, many people reason that it is more
>instrumental to believe in critical reason as providing better
>explanations. They don't have to have faith in reason to do that -
>they know it's better because the results are better 'in concreto':
>it is continuously testable.
>
>--
>Peter
>
>--
>This message is archived at:
>
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--
*********************************************************************************
Ted M. Kahn, Ph.D.
President & CEO
DesignWorlds for Learning, Inc. http://www.designworlds.com
Principal, CapitalWorks, LLC http://www.capworks.com
1116 Little John Way
San Jose, CA 95129
(408) 252-2285 Fax: (408) 516-9920
ted@designworlds.com
tkahn@capworks.com (011)
NMC Fellow: The New Media Consortium http://www.nmc.net (012)
Bay Area Science Education Collaboratory:
http://www.designworlds.com/Hewlett/BA_ScienceCollab/index.html (013)
Creating Virtual Collaboratories and Communities for Lifelong Learning
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