The Foolishness of the Non-Fool: Fundamentalism, New Atheism and the Enlightened Idiot

Part of our development into subjects involves our inscription into language. Whatever country we are born in, we must learn how to navigate a symbolic structure (English, French, Chinese etc.).

This inscription into language is not without its difficulties, and it never goes without a hitch. But very gradually language becomes transparent to us and we emerge as speaking subjects.

In becoming citizens of the symbolic order we require what Lacan called “the-name-of-the-father.” This phrase names an external authority that helps the infant make a basic connection between sounds (signifier) and meaning (signified). The-name-of-the-father basically enables the child to move from a suffocating literalistic world into a universe overwritten by symbols.

In short, the young child, in order to become a creature of language, has to be fooled into embracing perspectives and interpretations. In the words of Anaïs Nin, we no longer encounter the world as it is, but as “we are.”

Lacan was a master at forging neologisms and creating clever double entendres. Like the poet Mallarme, Lacan was constantly playing with the plasticity of language in ingenious ways that defy translation. One of these can be found in the phrase “the-name-of-the-father” which in French sounds identical to the phrase, “the non-duped err.”

When Lacan informed his students that the non-duped err, he was letting them know that if the-name-of-the-father fails then we do not properly enter into the symbolic realm, and that this causes us to make a fundamental mistake.

So what might this mean? To begin with watch this short sketch my Mitchell and Webb that takes place at a wedding,

What we witness here is the Best Man being utterly unable to enter into the fiction of the wedding. He takes what the groom says in a literal way and thus makes a very basic error. Of course he rightly considers himself to be the only truly enlightened one in the room, surrounded by fools who have been duped into thinking that they are witnessing the marriage of the gods. He feels the superiority of seeing the truth while the others fall for a ridiculous fiction. Yet it is precisely in his correctness that he errs. For, as Lacan would show, the truth is in the fiction.

The name that is given to the condition that erupts from a catastrophic failure of the-name-of-the-father is psychosis. The Psychotic is one who is not fully integrated into the symbolic realm. To have a psychotic structure is neither good nor bad in itself. It simply reflects certain struggles that the individual will have in their life that differ somewhat from the perverse subject or the neurotic one.

The psychotic will have a rather difficult relation to the symbolic system they inhabit. They will tend to see things literally, be confused by the invisible constellation of social cues that define behaviour, and get frustrated when people say one thing when they mean another. Parties will often be confusing to someone who is psychotic because what is said is rarely what is meant. They can’t easily read the social cues that come so naturally to everyone else and the ambiguity of flirting is almost impossible to interpret.

The psychotic is “non-duped.”

They see through the games people play, and for this very reason they err. Think of the pupil who doesn’t see her teacher as a symbolic authority. She only see a normal person where everyone else in the class sees a father or mother figure. She doesn’t treat the teacher with the same respect and thus finds herself getting into trouble, being suspended, or even kicked out of school. The school system is just a human construct to her, and thus she finds it hard to give it any symbolic authority. While she has a clearer insight than the others in her class, it causes her all kinds of problems. As she grows she finds the same problems repeated when she encounters the police or a judge. She doesn’t pay fines, finds it difficult to keep on top of bills, and isn’t scared of banks who chase her for an unpaid debt. The system is human, all too human. But for this very reason the psychotic can find herself homeless, in prison, or alone. The other path for the psychotic is to learn how to adapt and pretend. This actually enables her to do very well in society. The clever psychotic can play the system, and do things that a neurotic cannot. For instance, a neurotic business owner might so fear the bank that he tries to pay back an impossible loan, while a psychotic will have no problem filing for bankruptcy and starting again. The symbolic “failure” of being bankrupt means nothing to her.

In New Atheism we witness something similar going on with regards to peoples religion. The New Atheist prides himself on not being duped by silly religious fantasies. But for this very reason he misunderstands what is happening in religion. He is like a person who hears a grandparent say, “my grandchild is the most beautiful kid in the world,” and laughingly responds, “of course she isn’t, that is an utterly ridiculous thing to say.” The individual is right, and for this very reason they make a fundamental error. The grandparent has let herself be duped, but this means that she is successfully inscribed into the symbolic world and is able to navigate it.

The Enlightened New Atheist sits back and laughs at those unenlightened naïve believers who say things like, “my religion is the most beautiful religion in the world.” Yet he does not realise that it is precisely in them not being a fool that they become utterly foolish.

Of course fundamentalism is also a type of structural psychosis in which the individual claims to inhabit a non-symbolic space. They are like the grandparent who literally means her grandchild is the most beautiful kid in the world.

The response is not for the besotted grandparent to say, “my child is average looking,” – the equivalent of a non-committal agnosticism – but to fully affirm the claim that her grandchild is the most beautiful child in the world without needing some ground for the claim.

To those inscribed into the symbolic universe the youtube debates between fundamentalists and new atheists look like the equivalent of one person claiming her grandchild is literally the most beautiful kid in the world, and another who argues that she most definitely isn’t.