Albert Ellis: On Fanaticism. . .

The following are writings found in Mohammed Atta's (one of the key organizers among the 19 hijackers who carried out the September 11, 2001 terrorists attacks in New York City, Washington, D. C., and Pennsylvania) luggage, which did not make it on to his flight. FBI investigators are not sure of the author's identify, whether it was Atta, another hijacker or someone else.

"The Last Night
"Everybody hates death, fears death, but only those, the believers who know the life after death and the reward after death, would be the ones who will be seeking death."
"Remind yourself that in this night you will face many challenges. But you have to face them and understand it 100 percent . . . . Obey God, his messenger, and don't fight among yourself where you become weak, and stand fast, God will stand with those who stood fast."

"You should pray, you should fast. You should ask God for guidance, you should ask God for help. . . . Continue to pray throughout this night. Continue to recite the Koran."

"Purify your heart and clean it from all earthly matters. The time of fun and waste has gone. The time of judgment has arrived. Hence we need to utilize those few hours to ask God for forgiveness. You have to be convinced that those few hours that are left you in your life are very few. From there you will begin to live the happy life, the infinite paradise. Be optimistic. The prophet was always optimistic."

"Check all of your items--your bag, your clothes, knives, your will, your IDs, your passport, all your papers. Check your safety before you leave. . . . Make sure that nobody is following you."

"Make sure that you are clean, your clothes are clean, including your shoes."

"Keep a very open mind, keep a very open heart of what you are to face. You will be entering paradise. You will be entering the happiest life, everlasting life."

Las Vegas Review-Journal, page 4A, Friday, September 28, 200l.

Consider relevant excerpts from an article written by insightful and foresightful New York City psychologist, Albert Ellis, in 1986.

Fanaticism That May Lead to a Nuclear Holocaust:
The Contributions of Scientific Counseling and Psychotherapy

Albert Ellis

". . . although most members of the human race are irrational much of the time and although they probably have strong innate--as well as acquired--predispositions to frequently behave self-defeatingly, I do not believe that [major] political leaders are foolish enough to ignore the immense dangers of nuclear reprisal. . . ."

I am quite concerned about the actions of a small group--in fact virtually any small group--of dedicated fanatics, of secular or religious dogmatists, of pious believers in Absolute Truth (capital A, capital T), who may deliberately resort to extreme violence, including worldwide genocide, to get their grandiose, monolithic way and to prove that they are 100% Right (with a capital R) and that the rest of us are 100% Wrong (with a capital W), no matter what the cost. . ." (p. 146).

"A much greater danger (than psychotic or paranoid people) presents itself today in the form of nonpsychotic people who tend to lead decent and productive lives but who are zealous and rabid in one particular respect, such as pious devotion to a one-sided political or religious cause. These fanatical followers of one preemptory creed often do not hesitate to behave antisocially and to flout the dictates of their community. . . ."

"In other countries (than America), especially those of the Near East and Asia, fanatical religious and political groups have set up extremely repressive state religions; have resorted to unusual degrees of censorship, torture, and killings against dissidents; have violently tried to politicize and religionize the people of other countries; have committed hundreds of terrorist acts, including the massacre of great numbers of innocent bystanders; have fomented scores of holy wars, have popularized kamikaze suicides by devout members who engage in terrorist attacks; and have made several parts of the world, such as Lebanon, unsafe for normal living. . ."

"To provide a couple of graphic examples of violence impelled by religious fanaticism, let me cite the New York Times (Smith, 1984) report that many fanatic followers of the Ayatollah Khomeni, including 12- to 17-year-old boys, have been trained by their leaders to be martyrs in the 'holy war' against Iraq. Whipped to a fanatical fervor by their religion-inspired teachers, they have often hurled themselves on barbed wire or marched into Iraqi mine fields in the face of withering gunfire to clear the way for Iranian tanks. Smith (1984), a New York Times reporter, wrote that 'across the back of their khaki-colored shirts was stenciled the slogan, 'I have a special permission of the Immam to enter heaven' (Smith, 1984, p. 21)."

"There are but a few of the recent incidents of fanatical secular and religious groups resorting to child abuse, war, terrorism, oppression of dissidents, kamikaze suicide, mass suicide, civil disobedience, satanism, and other instances of violence that show that zealots who believe in the Absolute Truth of their position will do anything--and I mean anything--to see that their sacred beliefs and sacrosanct customs prevail. I think that these flare-ups, in addition to the millions of incidents of violence that have occurred in thousands of communities for scores of centuries, provide considerable evidence that zealous advocates will do virtually anything, including resorting to rampant violence, to abet their chosen cause. And there is every reason to believe that if they have nuclear weapons available, they will resort to them, too.
"This is especially true for individuals who dogmatically believe in an afterlife and in a deity who especially favors them for their earthly conduct. As soon as you are utterly convinced that you must have an afterlife existence and that this depends on your present devotion to a sect, you will almost certainly join that sect, obey its rules and regulations, and stop giving much of a damn about how long you or your loved ones live on earth. You will rather easily risk killing and being killed, and if you also devoutly believe that your afterlife will be joyous if you exterminate nonbelievers, you will have little compunction about killing them and presumably ensuring yourself, at least in the next world, of eternal bliss.
"Even if you do not go quite this far but fanatically believe that your religious or social views absolutely must, under all conditions, prevail, you will hardly hesitate to murder nonbelievers who oppose your sacred views. The more holy and absolutistic your credos, the less you will be able to tolerate opposition to them--and the more extreme measures you will tend to take to exterminate infidels. Modern technology, alas, now makes it possible for fewer bigots to decimate much greater numbers of their victims than was true in the days of Nero, Genghis Khan, Ivan the Terrible, and Hitler. Fewer rabid partisans can not wreak immeasurable more violence and bloodshed than they could previously. And the amount of butchery a small number of True Believers can inflict on the rest of humanity is increasing by leaps and bounds with every passing decade. Eventually the day will come when a paltry few individuals can use nuclear (and other) weapons to wipe out billions of people and other living creatures. Billions? Yes, billions" (p. 147).

". . . as soon as people make this magical jump [from 'Because my goal is very important, I absolutely must achieve it' to 'Because I strongly desire you to agree with me, you incontestably must follow my views!') they create powerful feelings of anxiety, hostility, and low frustration tolerance--which then frequently drive them into fights, feuds, and wars. When you devoutly must achieve a goal and unquestionably have to make others wee things your way, you will tend to feel horrified when anyone blocks you and will sometimes feel driven to use any means, including terrorist force, to ensure that you get what you fervently think you need.
". . . people's insistence that their views must under all conditions prevail sometimes leads them to wreak carnage on others. . . ."

". . . many bigots are so outrightly psychotic that no amount of education and persuasion may induce them to change. So they may be real diehards--and we may all, to coin a tragic pun, die hard with them!"

"My hypothesis is, however, that the great majority of rabid cultists are unstable and neurotic but hardly psychotic. I think that they are highly suggestible individuals who easily adopt the extreme positions of the group they join (or are born into) but that they are still capable of some degree of critical and scientific thinking. . . .
"I am proposing, in other words, that there is hope for our present troubled and disordered world . . . .. If we . . . understand clearly the core irrationalities that may lead to zealotry-incited nuclear warfare and if we can teach great masses of people how to surrender their dogmas, we may help stave off a worldwide holocaust.
"What are some of the main absolutistic shoulds and musts that may lead some devout sects to favor mass human destruction? They include:
1. 'Our views of people and the universe are Absolutely and Everlastingly True, and nobody deserves to live who opposes these supreme views.'
2. 'If our opponents prevail--as they unquestionably must not ever be allowed to do--they would ruin the entire human race. Therefore, they must be stopped and annihilated, no matter what the cost!'
3. 'Our political or religious cause is the only worthy one that should exist. We alone can save humanity and prevent evil! We must do everything--yes, anything--to make sure that we extirpate everyone who prevents our noble cause from prevailing!'
4. 'We are absolutely certain that an afterlife exists and that if we pulverize all our enemies, we will be rewarded and achieve eternal bliss in this afterlife while they will suffer eternally in hell!'"

"Cognitively, we would dispute fanatical beliefs by asking incisive questions, such as: 'Where is the evidence that your views of people and the universe are Absolutely and Everlastingly True? If they are true, why do you have to make them prevail? Can you prove that people who do not hold them do not deserve to live and must be exterminated? Can you demonstrate that your political or religious cause, however good it may be, is the (p. 148) only one that can benefit and save humanity? And how will annihilating everyone contribute to saving it?'"

"For example [rational, scientific statements that contradict narrow-minded individuals' disturbance-creating bigotries are as follows):

"There are no rotten or evil people but only people who behave poorly and unethically under some conditions some of the time. Because the nature of humans is to be fallible, we can accept other people with their evil behavior, and thereby win their respect and give ourselves a much better chance of inducing them to change their behavior. If we label them rather than their behavior as wicked and if we kill them for their wickedness, that will hardly help them in any way to reform or to act less badly.
"If there really is one true God who favors us and our group. He or She will also forgive our enemies, for any God worthy of the name will hardly be cruel and sadistic."

". . . people can presumably be educated to subscribe to any kind of political or religious view they favor--but not to rabidly insist on death of all those who do not follow it. . . .
"[Ratinal-emotive therapy] disputes the idea that any humans, because of the wrong or evil ways they follow on earth, are rotten, worthless people who deserve to be wiped out entirely and perhaps to roast in hell for eternity. It demonstrates that humans, if they have any value or worth at all, have it because they are alive, not because they have special beliefs or perform notably well. . . .

"Several other humanistic and existential therapies [than rational-emotive therapy and Rogerian therapy], such as those of Alfred Adler, Viktor Frankl, Eric Berne, Rollo May, and Irving Yalom, similarly favor choice, freedom, and self-actualization rather than conformity and dogma" (p. 149).

". . . we had better adapt it [these approaches] to educational applications so that virtually all humans, from kindergarten onward, can be shown what they are doing to needlessly upset and infuriate themselves and are presented with cognitive, emotive, and behavioral techniques they can use to calm themselves and to think and act more rationally. . . . large-scale education--in the schools, in community groups, in religious institutions, and in every mass media format--had better incorporate [rational] therapeutic teachings and bring them to the masses. . . ."

"Nuclear technology has now made it possible [to bring them to the brink of doom], and indeed very likely, that a relatively small group of partisans can wipe out perhaps the whole human race. If not now, then at least a number of years hence.
"The modern technology of violence indicates that if our species is to survive, we cannot any longer afford rampant rabidity and monomania. Humans must either become much less dogmatic and absolutistic or suffer the holocaustal consequences. How they are to forego their monolithic and grandiose thinking and thereby obviate the dangers of nuclear fission is as yet unresolved."

"I hardly think that science has all the answers to important human issues. It has its own limitations and drawbacks and is far from being a panacea for all ills. But the scientific method is probably the best antidote to absolutism that has ever been invented. . ." (p. 150).

Ellis, Albert. (1986). Fanaticism That May Lead to a Nuclear Holocaust: The Contributions of Scientific Counseling and Psychotherapy. Journal of Counseling and Development, 65, 146-151.

Smith, T. (1984, February 12). Iran: Five years of fanaticism. New York Times Magazine, pp. 20-34.

Replies:

Re:Albert Ellis: On Fanaticism. . ., by Lindsay Smith, 10/11/01 Re:Albert Ellis: On Fanaticism. . ., by Carol Kerr, 10/29/01 Albert Ellis on the Terroristic Attacks of September 11, 2001, by Carroll R. Thomas, 10/30/01

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