Veronika Mičanová: Extremism in our everyday life
In today’s world, we are surrounded by news about terrorist attacks and the fear of terrorists is spread through popular media. We are afraid of some unknown power and we tend to turn to stereotypes of race and belief and xenophobia when it comes to placing blame. We group into little hateful communities that are cursing people and nations different from us. We concentrate so much on our fear that we forget about extremism inbred inside each and one of us. Some of us are more intimidated, while others cleverly rationalize their fear and suppress their starting radical believes.
I believe that even though terrorists are dangerous, they are not that big of an issue for our everyday life as media likes to shout from its headlines on us. What’s more dangerous are our own radical thoughts. They create hatred which can be strengthened by feeling of fellowship in an alike-thinking group. Common hatred can be also one of the reasons why other people are being excluded. And now, I am not only talking about people at whom the hatred is targeted, but also about those people who don’t agree with it. People who are part of the same group or community - they have many shared thoughts, experiences and maybe are even friends - but they still have different viewpoint about some things like faith, death penalty or even small things like what the appropriate behavior of your neighbors should be like. The more their point of view clashes with attitude of their association, the more they become excluded. They can become outsiders.
In my life, I have met with a strong misunderstanding a few times – one of them was based on religion. I grew up in quite strongly believing catholic family, but as I got older I have realized I do not share certain beliefs with them. I believe in God, but in my own way. I don’t like all the rules in our religion and how it makes me feel guilty and sick of myself all the time. I also don’t like status of women in our religion. It is said that women and men are equal in eyes of God, but still women cannot do the same things as men: they can’t become priests, bishops or popes, which means they won’t be part of the higher positions that are deciding about things and rules. And when I have confided to my family about this, they have ridiculed me, ignored me and didn’t take my opinions seriously ever since. I have partially become an outcast in my own family due to their strong and almost radical opinions.
When you closely look at exclusion and inclusion, you find out they are connected. Because by being excluded from a group you can become a part of another (albeit usually marginalized) group. When I was excluded from the religious community of my family, I have realized I became a part of a different, confused and sad little community, even though in reality they may not be considered exactly a community, because sometimes their members don’t even realize they belong somewhere. This “community” consists of young people in my society who don´t believe in God or rather, they believe in something that can be described by the Church as heretical. By declaring their notions, they were not taken sincerely and they were not invited in deciding about certain matters. They were constantly looked upon as someone who is wrong and who have to and will change their minds eventually.
Every society has its own inclinations towards radical thinking and in my experience, society in my country has tendencies to be radical when it comes to religion and traditions that are rooted in it. When I started discussing in depth attitudes of people, I have stumbled across opinions that could be referred to as radical. These opinions, that are based on traditions see negatively certain behavior, beliefs, lifestyles and other things that are closely bound to the way we, as people, are. I’ve realized that society in my country has been creating these radical opinions for years and has been sharing them between generations - creating hatred towards not only difference but also people who support it. It is extremely hard to change this radicalism that moves the mainstream society from within. As a proof, we can look at the world as it is now – almost all of us are aware of the state of things, but we are usually unable to do something about it, as these radical views run deep in our culture.
In conclusion, I think that hidden extremism can be far more dangerous for us in everyday life than extremism at large, e.g. in form of politically- or religious-based terrorist attacks. Disagreement with radical opinions of any kind creates exclusion of people from alike-thinking groups, because people tend to believe in widely spread radical opinions out of conformity and fear of being excluded.