Fundamentalism, Relativism and the Balance Between

Relativism, Fundamentalism &
The Ability To Have Both Values & Myth
By Richard Schwartz

“To have a right opinion without being able to give reason is neither to understand (how could an unreasoned thing be understanding?) nor is it ignorance (for how can ignorance hit the truth?) Right opinion is no doubt something between knowledge and ignorance." - SOCRATES, Plato's Symposium

"The opposite of absolutism is not open-mindedness but relativism, and the opposite of dogmatism is not relativism but open-mindedness. There can be, and are, dogmatic relativists and open-minded absolutists." Huston Smith, Why Religion Matters, p. 209

"Truth is the kind of error without which a certain kind of living being could not live. The value for life ulitmately derides." (WM, 493) "One who tells the truth ends by realizing that he always lies." (XII, 293) Friedrich Nietzsche

"It is not the immorality of relativism that I find appalling. What is astounding and degrading is the dogmatism with which we accept such relativism, and our easygoing lack of concern of about what that means for our lives." Allan Bloom, The Closing of The American Mind, p. 239

JEFFREY MISHLOVE: You know, I recall a modern writer, Allan Bloom, has a very popular book out right now -- The Closing of the American Mind. His point is that we aren't teaching people more about good and evil. We're forgetting what he calls traditional, basic values. People are becoming too relativistic; we should be attacking evil more. You seem to be saying -- and I would agree -- that no, it's just the opposite; we should be transcending this good-and-evil polarity.

KATHLEEN SPEETH: And of course that is goodness, that is freedom. The Sufis have a nice way of saying it. They say, "Let go of your preconceptions, and accept your destiny." What is the reason to be liberated? What are we being liberated from? We're being liberated, basically, from conditioning that we received in early childhood, and also from anti-life aspects of probably our biology. I suppose that's in the DNA, I don't know. For what reason? It seems to me, so that we can live out some kind of personal destiny. And how will we ever know about that if we're going through the motions in order to continue some family tradition, or some cultural tradition?

Nihilism
Relativism
Open-Mindedness

The Ability To Have Both Values & Myth

Fundamentalism
Absolutism
Dogmatism

Left

Center

Right

Outer Directed, Lost In Ambiguity

Inner Directed

Outer Directed, Lost In Security

Void of All Prejudices

Having Prejudices, Paradoxically Indignant In Convictions & Yet Radical Skepticism Of Foundational Beliefs

Prejudice In Arrogant & Judgmental Shallowness

Objective to the point of detachment in a passionless third party.

Objective with subjective passion.

Subjective to the point of hypersensitivity and need to follow in (moral) restrained judgment; control.

No Prejudices, No Distinctions, All Views Considered Opinions Over Truths, Lacking All Serious Convictions That Ground Stability In Entrenched Values and Ethics.

Prejudices, With The Awareness Of Their Bias And Mythical Nature And The Ability To Alter - Even Radically, To What Is Deemed Best And Closer To Being Truths. Grounded, Convicted, Yet Aware of The Meaning of No Absolutes.

Prejudices That Remain Unchanged. Unchanging Ideologies That are Perceived As Absolute Truths, That Live Within Bias Human Perspectives, Crippled In Stagnation & Ceasing To Expand, To Evolve.

Relativism - The abstract and leveling of values, an equalizing of all values and beliefs

Nihliism - The chaos of instincts and passions that lack firm beliefs. A necessary stage of human development; that of despair and possibly suicidal. Yet a stage towards reconstruction and recreation to a world of meaningful values.

Cultural relativism - As opposed to relativism, cultural relativism teaches the need to believe while undermining belief. Unlike rational thinking and reasoning, the cultural relativist must care for culture more than truth. Such care can only be obtained through fighting and war (not in reasoning), as culture is not true in any absolute sense, for truth only stands in each relative position and perception.

Absolutism - All values and beliefs having universal, fundamental basics, which can no longer be broken down. Such are the absolutes, the atoms, the monads, the maxims and universal truths, that can no longer be questioned.

Dogmaticism - The inability to accept values and beliefs apart from, outside of one's determined own.

Nihilism means that the uppermost values devalue themselves. This means that whatever realities and laws set the standards in religion, morality and philosophy, they lose their binding force, which is their creative force. Relativism/Nihilism Is An Openness to Closedness, In That All Values and Cultures Are Homogenized In Equality. Reason Is Denied In A State Of Equalness And Failed Recognition Of Distinctions. All Forms Of Higher Intelligence And Surpassing Thinkers Are Leveled To Be Equal With Those Less Advanced.

Having The Ability to Have Both Values and Myths Is A True Openness Apart From Relativism, In That The Power Of Reason Is Used To Form Foundational Prejudices, Yet Always Open In Reason To Learning, Expanding & Seeking Other Values & Cultures That Contradict And Seriously And Sometimes Radically Adjust What Is Deemed As The Superior To New Views On What Is The True Good.

Fundamentalism Is Closed To All Openness In That It Rationalizes One's Prejudices To Dominate Over The Use of Reason, Intolerant of All Other Values That Deviate From The Preconceived Belief Systems and Narrow Clear-Cut Logic Of Safety And Certainty. Fundamentalism Is A Closed Book To Expansion And Lives In Stagnation, And In Many Cases, Antiquated Concepts.

Openness in Relativism means accepting everything and denying the power of reason. The unrestrained and thoughtless pursuit of openness, without recognizing the inherent political, social or cultural problem of openness as the goal of nature of finding the superior good, has rendered openness meaningless. Cultural relativism destroys both one's own and the good. Allan Bloom

"Ambiguity enters into life when the qualitative distinctions are weakened by a gnawing relection." Soren Kiergaard, The Present Age, p. 43

True Openness uses the virtues that permits us to seek the good by using our power of reason, adjusting our prejudices, not by relativism in homogenized avoidance, but relativism in degrees with value foundations, using reason to formulate outside our boundaries. By removing the authority of reason is to render ineffective the instrument that can correct our prejudices. True Openness is the accompaniment of the desire to know, hence of the awareness of ignorance. To deny the possibility of knowing good and bad is to suppress true openness.

Closedness allows prejudices to remain the dominating force, distorting reason and living within one's own phenomenal perception apart from all alternative value systems that may or may not be superior, but can only be investigated with the power of reason apart from internal security and clear cut answers that support preconceived ideologies and theological formulations.

Relativism, that is, complete relativism, the teaching of "openness," an "anything goes" in a drab diversity which thrives in an equalitarian democratic society, reduces the value of all teachings as arbitrary, meaningless in a mish mash of opinions and teachings that all equal each other out, voiding all validity of one claim over another into a homogenous society. Such openness removes all values and ethics, laws of nature, sciences and cultures that produce one ideology superior over another. The problem with relativism is it saps the spirit or mental energy of values, ethics and interior convictions of foundational strength, weakening one's power of being. In a relativist society, equalitarian, all teachings, cultures and values become abstract and valueless in a sea of relativity, none taking superior value over others. All alternative ways of thinking are removed in an equalitarian system of conformity to public opinion. Relativism brings indifference, extinguishing the real motive for education, the search for the good life, removing the very foundational walls of stability, with the inability to differentiate one culture from another. Such is the European and Nietzschean application of the term, "bourgeois," the democratic relativists, lacking values, creativity and convictions based on individuality, living as conformists and prisoners to public opinion. This is not meaning of Marx's original use of the term, but rather Marx equated this solely to capitalistic economic motives. The result of today's society based on Relativism is, a product of the "enlightenment" from the 17th & 18th centuries, devoid of Erros, as a passionless, arid, de-enchanted & dry society, where all longings for illimitable and immortal desires in romantic myth and eternal love, with passionate yearning in learning, poetry, and visionary enchantment are viewed as impractical, naive and even gullible, as all such fervent and majestic magnanimity is considered null and void in logical and pragmatic non-creative, unexpressive thinking. All mysterious, enthusiastic and mystifying longings for imaginative idealism in poetic, erotic utopian and phantasmagorical beauty and madness are lost in a society based on the practical reasoning of science and logic. Within such a devalued relativistic society, crops up fundamentalism. This is the basis for the "decline of western civilization."

"A passionate tumultuous age will overthrow everything; pull everything down; but a revolutionary age, that is at the same time reflective and passionless, transforms that expression of strength into a feat of dialectics; it leaves everything standing but cunningly empties it of significance. Instead of culminating in a rebellion it reduces the inward reality of all relationships to reflective tension which leaves everything standing but makes the whole of life ambiguous: so that everthing continues to exist factually whilst by a dialectical deceit, privatissime, it supplies a secret interpretation - that it does not exist. " Soren Kiergaard, The Preent Age, pp. 42-43

Both Fundamentalism and Relativism are ideologies that provide not reason but a rationalization for timidity, either in ambiguity or self contained security. To balance out in self growth and evolving consciousness is to progressively turn away from the extremes of both close minded fundamentalism, that lives in prejudice and bias judgment based on the myths of others and neurotic self, and to turn away from relativism, that lives in the melting pot of open equalitarian society of diluted values which whitewash all standards, reducing all values to hypothetical opinions. Beyond the limitations of both extremes can be found in the experience of self creativity, in what Goethe deemed, the action over theoretical life, the deed before knowledge, in the unfolding wisdom and insightful enchantment of the mysterious essence of living. It is here that Nietzsche spoke of the ability to create one's own myths with the tense bow of both chaotic passion from degrees of relativism, and yet at the same time, the self created foundational values, ethics and cultural justification that act as one's bedrock of strength and are fundamentally perceived as superior to others. Human life, the healthy psyche, needs foundations to build on, values to form, develop from, ethics to increase society and self, and yes, a degree of prejudice, as all favoritism is not evil but essential for value creating foundations that enable survival and evolving conscious expansion.

"When we talk of values, we are speaking under the inspiration or optics of life; life itself compels us to set up values, life itself values through us whenever we posit values . . ." Friedrich Nietzsche, The Will to Power, VIII, p.9

And yet there must be the simultaneous ability and awareness of perceiving the capacity and dexterity in undermining all such values, recognizing the fragile nature of their foundation as being built solely from self created myths and not absolute "truths." This both allows the awareness of alternative ways of thinking and creates the passionate desire and reason to learn to seek what may be superior to one's own, to gain insight in other cultures, as either inferior or superior from one's own and altering one's value system to that which is the greater good. Each must see one's own value system as being built on the same myths as all others, not equal, but with the pliable nature of change and adjusting disposition to the superior finding, thus defeating fundamental ignorance of one-sided narrow bias and at the same time, having strength and creativity, far removed from the weakening and debilitating nature of relativism and domination of public opinion. Having the ability to have both values and myths allows both the power of rational thinking along with the capacity to perceive revelatory experience beyond discursive thinking in intuitive awareness and degrees of consciousness apart from mathematical logic to that of creative, poetic essence of being in metaphorical meaning apart from ego, logic and absolutes, deep within the center of a collective existence and internal order.

Fundamentalism consists of one-sided definitions in intolerant "our way or nothing else," that lives in closed minded prejudice and exclusivity, supplying clear, concise interpreted answers, deciphering outlines in organized structure and annotated order. Once the chaotic nature of life, mystery and the unknown are arranged in such mathematical logistic formulas, such anxiety is converted to the object of fear, which can then be overtaken and cured with such structured applications and reasonings. The problems of fundamentalism are the underlying concurrence of fear and myth, resulting in trust of illusionary and irrational logic, in many cases using faulty logic to support such, or simple denial in what is entrusted in faith, despite obvious facts that support otherwise. The safety and certainty of the unknown to the now known, alleviate such pain to unanswered questions of life that can overwhelm without the protective walls of simplicity and clear cut structures that categorize and neatly arrange such ambiguous relativity. It is here in fundamental land, where religious, political and philosophical dogmatism thrives, where toleration is non existent outside of the formulated text and determined clarifications that prescribe and spell out meanings that are in reality not known, nor meant to be known within the consciousness level of human thinking. Fundamentalism organizes all knowledge (which in reality is phenomenal to the perception of each individual) to be seen through the tinted lens of mapped out formulations, with answers that supply claimed absolutes of eye witnessed accounts, extraordinary intellectual research and supernatural intervention, all so in support of quick fixes that act as boundaries and limitations to escape from freedom and flee from pain that responsible actions entail. Fundamentalism refuses to acknowledge living in life as both joy and despair, for despair takes courage and courage means facing pain, walking outside traditions, theological structures directly into the unknown painful reality, ceasing to hide.

Relativism in Religion

The Ability To Have Both Rational and Revelatory Thinking

Fundamentalism in Religion

In relativism, all religious belief systems are considered as simply open items from purely interpreted opinion, and exist equally, as equal creations of man in a homogenized sea of abstract and valueless meaning, a conformity without foundational values to build ethical standards and treatment. There is neither superiority in doctrine, nor ethics, eliminating all moral codes and basics apart from absolute and standards. This in turn produces a passionless society, reducing the former creativity and intellect of foundational systems that formed the current political, social, religious and ethical system. There is a continuity that runs through out the history of humanity in internal spiritual active participation, as opposed to rational logistic analysis, as the Perennial Philosophy, that of religious experience, which underlies all cultures, with the idea of compassion and meditation that produces contemplative experience, assimilating the subject into the object, creating a void of separatelessness, all existing as part of one collective whole. Yet in relativism, all ethics, good verses evil, are diluted in feeble ambiguity that fails to differentiate between values that adhere to the stability of order, peace and tranquility with interior contentment. While human sacrificial rites are considered an obvious and unacceptable extreme, what was obvious evil only in recent times, is considered acceptable today.

"What has come to an end is the distinction between the sensual and the supersensual, together with the notion, at least as old as Parmenides, that whatever is not given to the senses . . . is more real, more truthful, more meaningful than what appears; that it is not just beyond sense perception but above the wrold of the senses. . . . In increasingly strident voices, the few defenders of metaphysics have warned us of the danger of nihilism inherent in this development. The sensual . . . cannot survive the death of the supersensual (without nihilism moving in). " - Hannah Arendt

Here again, to balance out in self growth and evolving consciousness is to progressively turn away from the extremes of both close minded fundamentalism, that lives in one-sided belief systems, exclusive to such dogmas, conforming to predetermined values and to turn away from relativism that washes all belief systems into a dispersed, leveled out plateau that embraces openness to even ideologies that are completely opposing. Beyond both extreme views that either stagnate or melt down, is one of self created values, built on myths, yet perceived as superior to others, with one's own phenomenalist world, always learning, growing, expanding, searching and inquiring into all other belief systems, knowing they are self-created by others, yet seeking the greatest value. It is here, I find compassion as the ethical standard, a foundation of fundamentalism to build on, where as those doctrines of men that teach such illusionary concepts adopted from the creations of others, such as a divine man must die for our sins, or Mecca's that we must visit once a year, or rituals that must be performed or organized policy and interpretive standards that I must conform to, I find as bogus and life depleting, conforming to values of others that remove one's own interior development. Yet in each of these Religious systems, exist revelatory experience, unexplained essence of self creative foundations that live beautified and harmonious in value producing actions, that are personal experiences we all should seek to encounter. Nonconforming and conformity must live together in such a way that allows expression and growth from self created foundations and to higher levels of conscious thinking. The Perennial Philosophy is that of the intuitive awareness beyond discursive thinking, revelation over explanation, the power of mystical experience or religious experience in general which underlies all religious culture with striking similarities.

When fundamentalism is applied to religion, the one particular religious belief system is considered as absolute, the one and only "Truth." All other variations and any deviations are simply unacceptable for salvation. There is no choice, but a closedness to all others that fail to conform to the formulated, and so called "inspired, " text and moral coded system. This in turn produces both external anger and hostility towards any who oppose the internal neurotic hold on to beliefs that conflict with well established teachings that convey otherwise. It then produces exact interpretive, hair splitting meanings, that require both judicial and legal requirements, in many cases of gross proportion, disguised as morality and absolute truths. This in turn, produces both legalism and judgmentalism, both diametrically opposed to compassion. Careful painstaking studies and analytical inspection, along with illusionary ideas of an objective God(s), who oversees all actions, then becomes the responsible party for such ability of those chosen human instruments in understanding such divine absolute truths. Preconceived beliefs, over and over again, determine the interpretive slant and meaning towards various texts, moral codes and modes of living, all unknowingly created within the minds of men, who objectify a God that does not exist, with the power of their beings, that does exist. No matter how seemly factual and distinctly accurate, all human concepts and rational, definitive answers, religious, scientific and philosophical, are thus always created in the image of man.

Liberals and Conservatives
Absolutism and Relativism
Dogmatism and Open-Mindedness

A Sidewise Glance At The Social Scene
By Huston Smith from Why Religion Matters, pp.209-211

"Liberals: do not recognize the spiritual wholeness that can come from the sense of certainty." Embedded in that single sentence may be the primary reason the mainline liberal churches are losing ground to conservative churches. Liberals are at their worst in not recognizing how much an absolute can contribute to life, and in assuming that absolutes can be held only dogmatically, which is not the case. Absolutism and dogmatism lie on different axes. The first relates to belief, whereas the second is a character disorder. The opposite of absolutism is not open-mindedness but relativism, and the opposite of dogmatism is not relativism but open-mindedness. There can be, and are, dogmatic relativists and open-minded absolutists.

Generally speaking, religious conservatives regard the Truth by which they live as absolute and therefore appropriately capitalized, whereas liberals are more sensitive to its relativities - to the ways different points of view splinter the single, all-encompassing Truth and leave us with myriad lower-case truths,. Both positions have their virtues and their limitations.

The downside of Truth is the danger of fanaticism. Because absolutes brook no alternatives, conservatives are tempted to invade their neighbor's autonomy and try to force Truth down their throats. Liberals face the opposite problem, for the danger that stalks relativism is that it will both out into nihilism. At that extreme, relativism collapses into the view that nothing is better than anything else. This is an unlivable philosphy, but the indiscriminate championing of tolerance has moved out society in its direction while debasing the meaning of tolerance in the act. The following passage puts this point more vividly than I could, so (with thanks to Michael Novak, my former colleague at Syracuse University, who crafted it) I will quote it:

"Tolerance used to mean that people of strong convictions would willingly bear the burden of putting up peacefully with people they regarded as plainly in error. Now it means that people of weak convictions facilely agree that others are also right, and anyway the truth of things doesn't make much difference as long as everyone is "nice." I don't know if "judgementaphobic" is a is a word, but it ought to be. This republic crawls with judgmentalphobes. Where conscience used to raise an eyebrow at our slips and falls, sunny non-judgmentalism winks and slaps us on the back.

In the absence of judgment, however, freedom cannot thrive. If nothing matters, freedom is pointless. If one choice is as good as another, choice is merely preference. A glandular reflex would do as well. Without standards, no one is free but only a slave of impulses coming from who knows where."

That said, I turn to the happier side of the picture. Both liberals and conservatives also have their virtues. The virtue of liberalism is tolerance (in the valid, former sense of the word just indicated), and the virtue of conservatism (when likewise well handled) is the energy it can infuse into life through the feeling of certainty that the universe is on one's side.

This feeling can get drunkards out of ditches. One of the most arresting sentences I have come across in the recent years brought with it a special moment in time - it drew me up short and cause me to put down the journal for several minutes to stop and think. The sentence read, "Liberals: do not recognize the spiritual wholeness that can come from the sense of certainty." Embedded in that single sentence may be the primary reason the mainline liberal churches are losing ground to conservative churches. Liberals are at their worst in not recognizing how much an absolute can contribute to life, and in assuming that absolutes can be held only dogmatically, which is not the case. Absolutism and dogmatism lie on different axes. The first relates to belief, whereas the second is a character disorder. The opposite of absolutism is not open-mindedness but relativism, and the opposite of dogmatism is not relativism but open-mindedness. There can be, and are, dogmatic relativists and open-minded absolutists.

The preceding paragraphs show liberals as better than conservatives at recognizing the dangers of fanaticism and the virtues of tolerance, and conservatives as better at perceiving the dangers of nihilism and the virtues of the sense of certainty. Only one more step needs to be added, and it is an important one.

Both the strengths and the dangers of liberalism pertain to life's horizontal dimension, which encompasses human relationships (i.e., relationships between equals), whereas those of conservatives pertain to the vertical, asymmetrical God-person relationship. The sobering fact for religions liberals - the one that is causing them to lose ground to conservatives - is that, of the two dimensions, the vertical relation is the more important. It argues nothing against justice and compassion to say that those virtues are less important than God, for the sufficient reason that God anchors them in the nature of things. james Russell Lowell's familiar lines are dedicated to this point:

Truth forever on the scaffold, Wrong
forever on the throne, --
Yes that scaffold sways the future, and,
behind the dim unknown,
Standeth God within the shadow, keeping
watch above his own.

I repeat this important point. The issue is not over compassion and an alternative of whatever sort, but over the status of compassion in the nature of things. Is compassion rooted in ultimate reality, or is it only an admirable human virtue? That is a vertical question pertaining to worldview. Liberal inherited their exemplary passion for social justice from parents and grandparents who (for all their social concern) nailed the horizontal arm of the Christian cross to its vertical arm which (in standard rendition) is longer to symbolize its priority. In their declining concern for theology and worldviews, liberal Christians have in effect turned the cross on its side and made its horizontal arm the longer of the two. .

Nihilism Relativism Open-Mindedness	The Ability To Have Both Values & Myth	Fundamentalism Absolutism Dogmatism

Left	Center	Right
Outer Directed, Lost In Ambiguity	Inner Directed	Outer Directed, Lost In Security
Void of All Prejudices	Having Prejudices, Paradoxically Indignant In Convictions & Yet Radical Skepticism Of Foundational Beliefs	Prejudice In Arrogant & Judgmental Shallowness
Objective to the point of detachment in a passionless third party.	Objective with subjective passion.	Subjective to the point of hypersensitivity and need to follow in (moral) restrained judgment; control.

No Prejudices, No Distinctions, All Views Considered Opinions Over Truths, Lacking All Serious Convictions That Ground Stability In Entrenched Values and Ethics.	Prejudices, With The Awareness Of Their Bias And Mythical Nature And The Ability To Alter - Even Radically, To What Is Deemed Best And Closer To Being Truths. Grounded, Convicted, Yet Aware of The Meaning of No Absolutes.	Prejudices That Remain Unchanged. Unchanging Ideologies That are Perceived As Absolute Truths, That Live Within Bias Human Perspectives, Crippled In Stagnation & Ceasing To Expand, To Evolve.

Relativism - The abstract and leveling of values, an equalizing of all values and beliefs Nihliism - The chaos of instincts and passions that lack firm beliefs. A necessary stage of human development; that of despair and possibly suicidal. Yet a stage towards reconstruction and recreation to a world of meaningful values.	Cultural relativism - As opposed to relativism, cultural relativism teaches the need to believe while undermining belief. Unlike rational thinking and reasoning, the cultural relativist must care for culture more than truth. Such care can only be obtained through fighting and war (not in reasoning), as culture is not true in any absolute sense, for truth only stands in each relative position and perception.	Absolutism - All values and beliefs having universal, fundamental basics, which can no longer be broken down. Such are the absolutes, the atoms, the monads, the maxims and universal truths, that can no longer be questioned. Dogmaticism - The inability to accept values and beliefs apart from, outside of one's determined own.

Nihilism means that the uppermost values devalue themselves. This means that whatever realities and laws set the standards in religion, morality and philosophy, they lose their binding force, which is their creative force. Relativism/Nihilism Is An Openness to Closedness, In That All Values and Cultures Are Homogenized In Equality. Reason Is Denied In A State Of Equalness And Failed Recognition Of Distinctions. All Forms Of Higher Intelligence And Surpassing Thinkers Are Leveled To Be Equal With Those Less Advanced.	Having The Ability to Have Both Values and Myths Is A True Openness Apart From Relativism, In That The Power Of Reason Is Used To Form Foundational Prejudices, Yet Always Open In Reason To Learning, Expanding & Seeking Other Values & Cultures That Contradict And Seriously And Sometimes Radically Adjust What Is Deemed As The Superior To New Views On What Is The True Good.	Fundamentalism Is Closed To All Openness In That It Rationalizes One's Prejudices To Dominate Over The Use of Reason, Intolerant of All Other Values That Deviate From The Preconceived Belief Systems and Narrow Clear-Cut Logic Of Safety And Certainty. Fundamentalism Is A Closed Book To Expansion And Lives In Stagnation, And In Many Cases, Antiquated Concepts.

Openness in Relativism means accepting everything and denying the power of reason. The unrestrained and thoughtless pursuit of openness, without recognizing the inherent political, social or cultural problem of openness as the goal of nature of finding the superior good, has rendered openness meaningless. Cultural relativism destroys both one's own and the good. Allan Bloom "Ambiguity enters into life when the qualitative distinctions are weakened by a gnawing relection." Soren Kiergaard, The Present Age, p. 43	True Openness uses the virtues that permits us to seek the good by using our power of reason, adjusting our prejudices, not by relativism in homogenized avoidance, but relativism in degrees with value foundations, using reason to formulate outside our boundaries. By removing the authority of reason is to render ineffective the instrument that can correct our prejudices. True Openness is the accompaniment of the desire to know, hence of the awareness of ignorance. To deny the possibility of knowing good and bad is to suppress true openness.	Closedness allows prejudices to remain the dominating force, distorting reason and living within one's own phenomenal perception apart from all alternative value systems that may or may not be superior, but can only be investigated with the power of reason apart from internal security and clear cut answers that support preconceived ideologies and theological formulations.

Relativism, that is, complete relativism, the teaching of "openness," an "anything goes" in a drab diversity which thrives in an equalitarian democratic society, reduces the value of all teachings as arbitrary, meaningless in a mish mash of opinions and teachings that all equal each other out, voiding all validity of one claim over another into a homogenous society. Such openness removes all values and ethics, laws of nature, sciences and cultures that produce one ideology superior over another. The problem with relativism is it saps the spirit or mental energy of values, ethics and interior convictions of foundational strength, weakening one's power of being. In a relativist society, equalitarian, all teachings, cultures and values become abstract and valueless in a sea of relativity, none taking superior value over others. All alternative ways of thinking are removed in an equalitarian system of conformity to public opinion. Relativism brings indifference, extinguishing the real motive for education, the search for the good life, removing the very foundational walls of stability, with the inability to differentiate one culture from another. Such is the European and Nietzschean application of the term, "bourgeois," the democratic relativists, lacking values, creativity and convictions based on individuality, living as conformists and prisoners to public opinion. This is not meaning of Marx's original use of the term, but rather Marx equated this solely to capitalistic economic motives. The result of today's society based on Relativism is, a product of the "enlightenment" from the 17th & 18th centuries, devoid of Erros, as a passionless, arid, de-enchanted & dry society, where all longings for illimitable and immortal desires in romantic myth and eternal love, with passionate yearning in learning, poetry, and visionary enchantment are viewed as impractical, naive and even gullible, as all such fervent and majestic magnanimity is considered null and void in logical and pragmatic non-creative, unexpressive thinking. All mysterious, enthusiastic and mystifying longings for imaginative idealism in poetic, erotic utopian and phantasmagorical beauty and madness are lost in a society based on the practical reasoning of science and logic. Within such a devalued relativistic society, crops up fundamentalism. This is the basis for the "decline of western civilization." "A passionate tumultuous age will overthrow everything; pull everything down; but a revolutionary age, that is at the same time reflective and passionless, transforms that expression of strength into a feat of dialectics; it leaves everything standing but cunningly empties it of significance. Instead of culminating in a rebellion it reduces the inward reality of all relationships to reflective tension which leaves everything standing but makes the whole of life ambiguous: so that everthing continues to exist factually whilst by a dialectical deceit, privatissime, it supplies a secret interpretation - that it does not exist. " Soren Kiergaard, The Preent Age, pp. 42-43	Both Fundamentalism and Relativism are ideologies that provide not reason but a rationalization for timidity, either in ambiguity or self contained security. To balance out in self growth and evolving consciousness is to progressively turn away from the extremes of both close minded fundamentalism, that lives in prejudice and bias judgment based on the myths of others and neurotic self, and to turn away from relativism, that lives in the melting pot of open equalitarian society of diluted values which whitewash all standards, reducing all values to hypothetical opinions. Beyond the limitations of both extremes can be found in the experience of self creativity, in what Goethe deemed, the action over theoretical life, the deed before knowledge, in the unfolding wisdom and insightful enchantment of the mysterious essence of living. It is here that Nietzsche spoke of the ability to create one's own myths with the tense bow of both chaotic passion from degrees of relativism, and yet at the same time, the self created foundational values, ethics and cultural justification that act as one's bedrock of strength and are fundamentally perceived as superior to others. Human life, the healthy psyche, needs foundations to build on, values to form, develop from, ethics to increase society and self, and yes, a degree of prejudice, as all favoritism is not evil but essential for value creating foundations that enable survival and evolving conscious expansion. "When we talk of values, we are speaking under the inspiration or optics of life; life itself compels us to set up values, life itself values through us whenever we posit values . . ." Friedrich Nietzsche, The Will to Power, VIII, p.9 And yet there must be the simultaneous ability and awareness of perceiving the capacity and dexterity in undermining all such values, recognizing the fragile nature of their foundation as being built solely from self created myths and not absolute "truths." This both allows the awareness of alternative ways of thinking and creates the passionate desire and reason to learn to seek what may be superior to one's own, to gain insight in other cultures, as either inferior or superior from one's own and altering one's value system to that which is the greater good. Each must see one's own value system as being built on the same myths as all others, not equal, but with the pliable nature of change and adjusting disposition to the superior finding, thus defeating fundamental ignorance of one-sided narrow bias and at the same time, having strength and creativity, far removed from the weakening and debilitating nature of relativism and domination of public opinion. Having the ability to have both values and myths allows both the power of rational thinking along with the capacity to perceive revelatory experience beyond discursive thinking in intuitive awareness and degrees of consciousness apart from mathematical logic to that of creative, poetic essence of being in metaphorical meaning apart from ego, logic and absolutes, deep within the center of a collective existence and internal order.	Fundamentalism consists of one-sided definitions in intolerant "our way or nothing else," that lives in closed minded prejudice and exclusivity, supplying clear, concise interpreted answers, deciphering outlines in organized structure and annotated order. Once the chaotic nature of life, mystery and the unknown are arranged in such mathematical logistic formulas, such anxiety is converted to the object of fear, which can then be overtaken and cured with such structured applications and reasonings. The problems of fundamentalism are the underlying concurrence of fear and myth, resulting in trust of illusionary and irrational logic, in many cases using faulty logic to support such, or simple denial in what is entrusted in faith, despite obvious facts that support otherwise. The safety and certainty of the unknown to the now known, alleviate such pain to unanswered questions of life that can overwhelm without the protective walls of simplicity and clear cut structures that categorize and neatly arrange such ambiguous relativity. It is here in fundamental land, where religious, political and philosophical dogmatism thrives, where toleration is non existent outside of the formulated text and determined clarifications that prescribe and spell out meanings that are in reality not known, nor meant to be known within the consciousness level of human thinking. Fundamentalism organizes all knowledge (which in reality is phenomenal to the perception of each individual) to be seen through the tinted lens of mapped out formulations, with answers that supply claimed absolutes of eye witnessed accounts, extraordinary intellectual research and supernatural intervention, all so in support of quick fixes that act as boundaries and limitations to escape from freedom and flee from pain that responsible actions entail. Fundamentalism refuses to acknowledge living in life as both joy and despair, for despair takes courage and courage means facing pain, walking outside traditions, theological structures directly into the unknown painful reality, ceasing to hide.

Relativism in Religion	The Ability To Have Both Rational and Revelatory Thinking	Fundamentalism in Religion
In relativism, all religious belief systems are considered as simply open items from purely interpreted opinion, and exist equally, as equal creations of man in a homogenized sea of abstract and valueless meaning, a conformity without foundational values to build ethical standards and treatment. There is neither superiority in doctrine, nor ethics, eliminating all moral codes and basics apart from absolute and standards. This in turn produces a passionless society, reducing the former creativity and intellect of foundational systems that formed the current political, social, religious and ethical system. There is a continuity that runs through out the history of humanity in internal spiritual active participation, as opposed to rational logistic analysis, as the Perennial Philosophy, that of religious experience, which underlies all cultures, with the idea of compassion and meditation that produces contemplative experience, assimilating the subject into the object, creating a void of separatelessness, all existing as part of one collective whole. Yet in relativism, all ethics, good verses evil, are diluted in feeble ambiguity that fails to differentiate between values that adhere to the stability of order, peace and tranquility with interior contentment. While human sacrificial rites are considered an obvious and unacceptable extreme, what was obvious evil only in recent times, is considered acceptable today. "What has come to an end is the distinction between the sensual and the supersensual, together with the notion, at least as old as Parmenides, that whatever is not given to the senses . . . is more real, more truthful, more meaningful than what appears; that it is not just beyond sense perception but above the wrold of the senses. . . . In increasingly strident voices, the few defenders of metaphysics have warned us of the danger of nihilism inherent in this development. The sensual . . . cannot survive the death of the supersensual (without nihilism moving in). " - Hannah Arendt	Here again, to balance out in self growth and evolving consciousness is to progressively turn away from the extremes of both close minded fundamentalism, that lives in one-sided belief systems, exclusive to such dogmas, conforming to predetermined values and to turn away from relativism that washes all belief systems into a dispersed, leveled out plateau that embraces openness to even ideologies that are completely opposing. Beyond both extreme views that either stagnate or melt down, is one of self created values, built on myths, yet perceived as superior to others, with one's own phenomenalist world, always learning, growing, expanding, searching and inquiring into all other belief systems, knowing they are self-created by others, yet seeking the greatest value. It is here, I find compassion as the ethical standard, a foundation of fundamentalism to build on, where as those doctrines of men that teach such illusionary concepts adopted from the creations of others, such as a divine man must die for our sins, or Mecca's that we must visit once a year, or rituals that must be performed or organized policy and interpretive standards that I must conform to, I find as bogus and life depleting, conforming to values of others that remove one's own interior development. Yet in each of these Religious systems, exist revelatory experience, unexplained essence of self creative foundations that live beautified and harmonious in value producing actions, that are personal experiences we all should seek to encounter. Nonconforming and conformity must live together in such a way that allows expression and growth from self created foundations and to higher levels of conscious thinking. The Perennial Philosophy is that of the intuitive awareness beyond discursive thinking, revelation over explanation, the power of mystical experience or religious experience in general which underlies all religious culture with striking similarities.	When fundamentalism is applied to religion, the one particular religious belief system is considered as absolute, the one and only "Truth." All other variations and any deviations are simply unacceptable for salvation. There is no choice, but a closedness to all others that fail to conform to the formulated, and so called "inspired, " text and moral coded system. This in turn produces both external anger and hostility towards any who oppose the internal neurotic hold on to beliefs that conflict with well established teachings that convey otherwise. It then produces exact interpretive, hair splitting meanings, that require both judicial and legal requirements, in many cases of gross proportion, disguised as morality and absolute truths. This in turn, produces both legalism and judgmentalism, both diametrically opposed to compassion. Careful painstaking studies and analytical inspection, along with illusionary ideas of an objective God(s), who oversees all actions, then becomes the responsible party for such ability of those chosen human instruments in understanding such divine absolute truths. Preconceived beliefs, over and over again, determine the interpretive slant and meaning towards various texts, moral codes and modes of living, all unknowingly created within the minds of men, who objectify a God that does not exist, with the power of their beings, that does exist. No matter how seemly factual and distinctly accurate, all human concepts and rational, definitive answers, religious, scientific and philosophical, are thus always created in the image of man.