I meant to post this a while ago. Well, better late than never…
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After posting on Tom Cruise’s Scientology video two months ago, I heard and read quite a few other reactions to it. While all of the reactions were negative, I was fascinated by the reasons for these reactions. Virtually all the commentary I encountered focused not on the sheer nuttiness of Cruise’s beliefs (my reason for posting on the topic), but on the passion with which he adhered to them.
I began to realize that I have more in common with Cruise than I would have previously imagined. The world hates Cruise for the same reason it hates me. Cruise and I are agents of intolerance, because we hold our beliefs to be objectively true. In a postmodern world, there are no silly beliefs or ideas. As long as belief X makes you happy or a better person, great! The truthfulness of the belief or idea is irrelevant in the age of postmodern relativity. However, once a believer believes too strongly - once he becomes convinced that his beliefs and ideas are objectively true, not just for him, but for everyone - then he’s in trouble.
Cruise has merited this universal disapprobation not by adhering to a religion that attributes humanity’s problems to Body thetans, unleashed 75 million years ago by the evil alien ruler, Xenu, by but by adhering to it with conviction and sincerity. In a weird way, I respect that. If Cruise believes these things to be objectively true, and believes it important for all humanity to understand and embrace these truths, then it would be both unkind and unreasonable for him to not proselytize.
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Cruise’s problem is not his passion. Cruise’s problem is his religion’s unwillingness to face (or allow) open examination and scrutiny. This unwillingness springs, I think, from a subconscious realization that LRH’s scam of a religion would crumble under very little critical weight.
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Now playing: Andrew Bird’s Bowl of Fire - Core and Rind
via FoxyTunes
I have a question Jim, is our choice then between either relativistic nihilism and fundamentalist absolutism? I feel like that is what you’re implying here, but that seems to me to be a false dichotomy. I believe in objective truth, I don’t believe the human mind has the power to come even close to grasping it; thus I chose to find a middle ground in skepticism. When Cruise passionately sells his version of ultimate and absolute truth I find myself skeptical, after all it is always those who advocate such truths that seem to cause humanity the most harm (Marx, Stalin and Castro for starters). I came across this quote from Montaigne while reading the other day,
“Since a wise man can be mistaken, and a hundred men, and many nations, yes, and human nature is mistaken for many centuries about this or that, what assurance have we that sometimes it stops being mistaken, and in this century it is not making a mistake?”
Montaigne saw first hand the kind of insanity absolute assurance in inerrant truths leads to, as Protestants and Catholics all over France burned each other at the stake for the sake of preserving their absolute truths. We see it now every day on the news as Muslim men strap bombs to themselves and murder their fellow citizens in the name of the inerrant truth of the Koran.
This, I think, is why the kind of passion Cruise displays when proselytizing frightens people; any one that convinced of their truth is liable to do stupid and dangerous things in its name.
John,
I generally agree with what you’re saying. My first post on Cruise was a criticism, and I continue to criticize Scientology. A healthy skepticism is good. I merely meant to point out that most of Cruise’s detractors were not offended or troubled at the silliness of his beliefs, but at the passion and conviction with which he held them.
Muslim terrorists are not dangerous because of their passion, but because of the content of the beliefs with which the passionately adhere.
God Bless