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Sometimes we get so involved in a discussion that we forget what we're talking about, or else we forget that someone new may have just come into the room, who hasn't heard what's gone before or simply has a fresh perspective to bring.

It happened to me tonight. A young man I work with, who had read one of my blog posts about fundamentalism, walked up beside me as I waited with mounting impatience for a belated PATH train. We got to talking about the subject of fundamentalism, and this young man asked me a very incisive question: "What is Fundamentalism?"

It's the kind of question that should be asked recurrently, honestly, and probingly of every major concept in public debate or private discussion. So I answered him, much as I have answered the question in writing before, but with the added energy that a personal encounter provides. I told him that wherever truth is spelled with a capital T (or god with a capital G); wherever an insight is cemented into doctrine and placed onto a pedestal of untouchable, unchangeable, unquestionable, holy Truth, then there is fundamentalism. It most commonly appears in religious ideology, but is also quite frequently seen in politics, government, ethics, business, law, and even science. Newtonian mechanics was the fundamentalism of physics for some three centuries before anyone dared to question its core assumptions.

Then my friend asked another excellent question which few have the daring to ask: "what does a fundamentalist belief do for someone; what does it provide people that it seems to be so pervasive in our world?"

Now that's a question that could be the subject of an entire book, college course, or doctoral dissertation. It's asking, "what is the psychological payoff for adhering to and defending a fundamentalist belief? Why would people be led to sacrifice their freedom and even their lives or their children's lives for the sake of such a belief?"

Since I had only the tail end of a seven minute trip underneath the Hudson River to respond in, I kept it crisp and short: it seems to boil down to security and a false sense of endurance or self-aggrandizement through affiliation. In other words, if I am walled off in my life by an institution or a religion that says it will protect me, preserve me and my family, and even offer me the promise of limitless rewards in a Kingdom-to-come; the sacrifice of personal independence for this safety and security will seem quite rational, even compelling. It may even seem like a minimal

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