One can’t help but be reminded that we find some of the same profound differences in yesterday’s very short posting about Catholics and Moslem differences that we see between Catholics and Puritans. Other Protestant denominations have, or had in their beginnings, a self-righteous dourness that frowned on fun. When we realize that, in a way, Moslems are an early Protestant denomination, we see similar dislikes of enjoyment.
Many groups on the left also make careers of being deadly serious about things. Few groups have such grim visages as those who are wrought with concerns about “our duty to make the world a better place.”
Moslems, however, have sunk so far into seriousness that they have made it into what might be their only sacrament. There is a strong core of self-righteousness at the heart of such seriousness. That self-righteousness is so strong that it has taken form in their approach to the world. If there are no Jews, Christians, or Hindus to blow up, Moslems are always able to find other Moslems nearby who need to be killed for differing with them in some way or another.
Side note: Moslems do not allow dogs to be pets. No Christian denomination has ever been quite so sour and dour as to be fanatically obsessed with keeping people from the enjoyment of having a pet dog.
Yesterday, in the Gaza Strip an amusement park was bombed and burned. Someone had “turned it in” because “men and women were in public, together”. So, a group of people whose personalities and skills were oriented toward burning and bombing promptly gave into their desires to do so. They destroyed the park, its rides, and attractions.
Were they having fun as they blew up, bombed, or burned each part of the park? Were they enjoying the process of destroying the amusement park as much as others had enjoyed the various rides and activities? If so, some Moslems worry, aren’t they as bad as those who were finding the same degree of enjoyment in riding those rides? What is to be done to be sure that the Moslems who are killing, bombing, and burning are not just having fun? The truest believer wants to root out the intellectual flaw, the deep hypocrisy, in the thinking of those who refuse to consider that they, themselves, must not be having “fun” while killing, bombing, burning, scourging, stoning, and disfiguring.
The desired degree of Puritanical intellectual integrity cannot be achieved without “happiness meters” and small explosive charges attached to them. The “happiness meter” will measure the activity in the part of the brain where joy is centered. When the person is “too” happy, a signal is automatically sent to a small explosive device connected to it. One such assemblage be inserted in the body of every person on earth. Any time the “happiness meter” got too close to “JOY”, it would trigger the “Happiness-Eradication Device” to explode.
If the rider on a roller coaster, or the killer or bomber of that same rider or roller coaster got too happy about what they were doing, they would die immediately, killed automatically when their excess happiness automatically exploded their “Happiness-Eradication Device “.
A fatwa mandating the immediate installation of such devices within every person on earth seems to be the only way to save us all.