In our world, at this moment, dialogue is dying, and righteous indignation abounds. People shout over each other, screaming louder and louder, but it isn’t clear that anybody is listening.
That’s from the new book Minds Wide Shut: How the New Fundamentalisms Divide Us (Princeton University Press). In this episode of Gospelbound, I was joined by the authors, Morton Schapiro and Gary Saul Morson. Schapiro has been president of Northwestern University in Chicago since 2009. Morson teaches Slavic languages and literature at Northwestern and is currently at work on a study of The Brothers Karamazov, which I can’t wait to see.
Schapiro and Morson describe fundamentalism as “radical simplification of complex questions and the inability to learn either from experience or from opposing views.” They warn, “We are entering an era when politics seems to be conducted as war by other means.” And a little later: “Fundamentalist thinking is utopian, if not apocalyptic. One knows the truth, and those who disagree are ignorant, evil, or insane. All goodness belongs to one’s own camp.”
Among their proposed solutions is a recovery of casuistry, or employing case studies especially from great literature for experience-based learning. I asked them about grand theories and alternative facts and economics, and I’m grateful they agreed to join me on Gospelbound in the spirit of further learning and dialogue.
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