Every authentic religion eventually produces its own fundamentalism.

An authentic religion is a finite self’s whole-being response to infinite being. It is both actively receptive and receptively active toward reality which no self can contain, which contains all selves, in which self participates as one spark among myriad fellow-sparks, who are respected as messengers from beyond self. Religion is an aid for keeping a self responsive to infinite being. Religious existence is uncomfortable, elusive and perpetually challenging, and formal religion provides a moderate degree of comfort, definition and assistance in maintaining such an existence.

Fundamentalisms result when the basic toward-infinity response is forgotten and unconsciously replaced with a within-me set of concepts. The religion is everted, and all religious concepts are flipped with respect to their “image schema” relationships. Let’s just call this process dysfinition and the resulting state of mind dysfinitude.

In a state of dysfinitude, infinite reality is packed inside a self’s finite mind. Fellow participants in infinity are packed inside the mind as well, becoming messengers of what is already known, either a confirmation of truth or a known bearer of falsehood. And the locus of religious texts — always addressed to and read from and primarily applicable to the first-person self — is shifted to the third-person. One’s own known doctrine addressed to third-person others, to whom it is addressed, for whom it is read and applied. The Golden Rule is deformed to mean that everyone else is obligated to treat me however I believe is right to treat others, whether they like it or not.

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How does dysfinitude happen? Miseducation. Students are no longer taught the relationship to infinite being through participation in religious existence. Instead they finished religious forms are thrust into their hands to master without ever first experiencing a need for such forms, which is the only way to recognize their purpose.

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I believe Leftist Identitarianism is the fundamentalist deformation of postmodernism.