Today’s video is about the diving line between faith and fanaticism. Here it is :

I seem to have discovered a rich vein of insight with this line of thinking, so I will continue to explore the topic in this blog entry.

Picking up where the video left off, what really has me fascinated right now is the notion that no matter how a particular subculture looks from the outside, as long as they do not break the law or otherwise step outside the bounds of normal pluralistic society, they are all more or less equal in society’s eyes.

I say “more or less” because obviously being a neo-Nazi is a lot more likely to get you off the guest list for fancy parties than being Presbyterian.

But in a live and let live society like our own, in the eyes of society, everybody who behaves themselves is equal. Whatever you and your friends do together on the weekend is fine, whether it’s a church picnic or a NAMBLA rally. As long as you are not breaking the law, do what you like.

And I find that fascinating because it runs completely counter to the way the average citizen actually thinks about society, and yet it is also undoubtedly true.

In a modern society, we are all about judging one another socially and deciding who are the good people and who are not. No matter your political stripe, it’s virtually guaranteed, indeed it’s almost logically inevitable, that you think people who think differently are wrong and possibly defective.

Same with people who don’t share your taste in music, or television, or fine dining. The modern society is highly pluralistic, so these little divisions are usually not taken very seriously and we all, to some extent, grasp that the Big Rule of society is “mind your own business and others won’t mind yours”, but because modern life is safe, stable, and secure, it furnishes our lower level needs quite reliably, causing the next level up, the social needs, to become our highest priority.

So we divide ourselves into all these overlapping groups, circles upon circles of association connected together in a n-space Venn Diagram that would drive even the most resourceful topologist insane.

And we behave as though these social (as opposed to legal) divisions are incredibly important and are, in fact, iron clad rules of the universe. And I don’t exclude myself from this by any means. Ask me what I think of the current crop of conservatives some time.

But when you really look at it, in society’s view, we are all the same. In society’s view, there are sane law abiding citizens, and that’s most of us, and there’s the crazy and/or criminal who need to be punished, and that is it.

Nobody actually gets bonus points from society itself for being a good person. That happens on a lower level, both due to the nature of human interaction (people like nice people) and the more subtle forms of social punishment that lack the brute force of law (like becoming a social pariah).

And this causes a certain amount of stress between the citizens and their societies sometimes. We all get the “live and let live” rule in the broad sense, but sometimes, when confronted with people who really make us angry or disgusted, we forget ourselves and demand the right to punish the members of a subculture for being so odious to us, the only truly good people of society.

The long arm of the law, on the other hand, has to take the position that all law-abiding citizens are equal or the law will become compromised, lose its impartiality, and cease to be a force to restrain the citizenry and maintain law and order.

It would instead simply be a socially condoned lynch mob, and that cannot last.

Luckily, we have progressed far enough in the world of the developed democracies of the world that this pressure from the citizens is largely muted. You still get law bent to punish socially odious people (like smokers, for example), and this is good because sometimes, not often but sometimes, this is actually needed in order for society to progress.

But when this does not happen, citizens become angry about the society that “does nothing” to punish these “bad people”, and tension builds. If it becomes strong enough, people will give up on society and decide to rectify the situation themselves via vigilante justice.

A modern society must always keep this in mind. From this point of view, vigilantism can be seen as a symptom of society’s failure to deal with a problem, real or imaginary, in a way that resolved the tension one way or another.

Luckily, vigilantism is a form of fanaticism, and requires stepping out of the role of “normal citizen” and doing things which are at the very least abnormal and quite possibly also illegal. So most people will never become vigilante (despite our love of them in fiction) because most people are not crazy.

It is when ordinary citizens become angry enough and/or feel threatened enough to take up arms in protest and step out of the ordinary lives that no longer make them feel safe that revolution becomes a real possibility. That is the true cause of real social instability, and a society has to suffer a very large degradation of the feeling of connection between the citizens and the government for this to happen.

People have to believe that there is some reasonable way for them to be safe. It has to be possible to be okay if you do all the things you are supposed to do.

When people begin to feel that there is no security no matter what you do, vigilantism turns into revolution and society itself is in peril.

Sane and smart societies do everything they can to make sure they never reach that point.

And those that don’t fall and get taken over by others.

I wonder what will happen to us?