the.com/fanaticism
Certainty that survived contact with evidence it was wrong.
means An extreme, unreasoning devotion to a belief or cause, so total it crowds out doubt, nuance, and other people's right to disagree.
from Traces back to the Latin 'fanaticus,' meaning 'of a temple' or 'inspired by a god' — originally describing the frenzied devotees of a shrine, people whipped into ecstatic, trembling worship by religious rites. The 'fanum' at its root means 'temple.' So the word's ancestry is literal: someone so possessed by the divine they lost themselves in it. English borrowed it in the 1500s–1600s to describe religious extremism, then let it wander into politics, sports, and anything else humans could lose their minds over.
- etymology
- from fanum, temple — originally meant temple-possessed
- core trait
- doubling down, not doubling checking
- paradox
- feels like conviction, functions like fear
- cure rate
- low, because it treats disagreement as disloyalty