Meanderthal: The Dreaded Dogmabot

In an earlier post on the dreaded obie, I referred to an even more terrifying creature known as a dogmabot.

A dogmabot is a person whose mental machinery has been hijacked by an ideological virus. The coinage is suggested by this wonderful passage from Tom Robbins' Still Life With Woodpecker:

Now, the line that separates objects from ideas can be pretty twiggy but let’s not unzip that pair of pants. Galileo was right to drop objects rather than ideas off of his tower…Within the normal range of perception, the behavior of objects can be measured and predicted. Ignoring the possibility that in the wrong hands almost any object, including this book you hold, can turn up as Exhibit A in a murder trial; ignoring, for the moment, the far more interesting possibility that every object might lead a secret life, it is still safe to say that objects as we understand them, are relatively stable, whereas ideas are definitely unstable, they not only can be misused, they invite misuse- and the better the idea the more volatile it is. That’s because only the better ideas turn into dogma, and it is this process whereby a fresh, stimulating, humanly helpful idea is changed into robot dogma that is deadly. In terms of hazardous vectors released, the transformation of ideas into dogma rivals the transformation of hydrogen into helium, uranium into lead, or innocence into corruption. And it is nearly as relentless.

The problem starts at the secondary level, not with the originator or developer of the idea but with the people who are attracted by it, who adopt it, who cling to it until their last nail breaks, and who invariably lack the overview, flexibility, imagination, and, most importantly, sense of humor, to maintain it in the spirit in which it was hatched. Ideas are made by masters, dogma by disciples, and the Buddha is always killed on the road.

There is a particularly unattractive and discouragingly common affliction called tunnel vision, which, for all the misery it causes, ought to top the hob list at the World Health Organization. Tunnel vision is a disease in which perception is restricted by ignorance and distorted by vested interest. Tunnel vision is caused by an optic fungus that multiplies when the brain is less energetic than the ego. It is complicated by exposure to politics. When a good idea is run through the filters and compressors of ordinary tunnel vision, it not only comes out reduced in scale and value but in its new dogmatic configuration produces effects the opposite of those for which it originally was intended.

That is how the loving ideas of Jesus Christ became the sinister clichés of Christianity. That is why virtually every revolution in history has failed: the oppressed, as soon as they seize power, turn into the oppressors, resorting to totalitarian tactics to “protect the revolution.” That is why minorities seeking the abolition of prejudice become intolerant, minorities seeking peace become self-righteous, and minorities seeking liberation become hostile (a tight asshole being the first symptom of self-repression).

I can't conceive of anything that could improve this passage, which has become as dear to me as Psalm 23 is to many a devout church-goer. However, I do think an expansion on my defintion of dogmabot is in order to clarify my meaning.

Dogmabots are mindless, but they are not necessarily unintelligent. A clever dogmabot can easily outmanuever an uninfected opponent in an argument. If you are locked in battle with a dogmabot, don't be fooled into thinking that their closemindedness can be easily exploited to your advantage. In fact, if you aren't especially careful, repeated exposure can put you at risk for infection. Watch yourself!

Dogmabots are not merely obsessive about some practice or principle. A person who insists that "real" bluegrass music cannot incorporate a wah-wah pedal might be a self-righteous killjoy, but they are not necessarily a dogmabot. No, the condition of dogmabotulism requires that the very manner in which sensory data are perceived, analyzed and reconstructed be entirely in service of a particular ideological framework. The dogmabot believes they can alter reality, and they are correct insofar as their personal experience of the world is concerned. What's worse, if they achieve enough temporal power (say, by becoming leader of the world's largest military), they may very well be able to alter your reality.

Is there a cure for dogmabotulism? We really aren't sure. We know that logic does not work on dogmabots, some investigators even suspect that logic itself is a source of dogmabotulism. Recent research suggests that catastrophic disillusionment may precipitate a shutdown of the ideological virus, and that the effect is proportional to the amount of suffering associated with the disillusionment. However, preliminary results indicate that this remission may be temporary, and results are highly variable from individual to individual. Ostracizing the dogmabot usually exacerbates the problem, and is not recommended.

The best course of action according to Dr. Diaphana S. Knight-Gowan, Professor of Mnemotony at Phling College, is prevention. This entails practicing good mental hygeine. The doctor recommends the following:

Stop watching T.V. or only watch T.V. in languages you don't understand.
Question everything. Including these recommendations.
Laugh at tasteless jokes. Make up and disseminate tasteless jokes.
Change the order in which you perform commonplace tasks, if you put your pants on before your shoes, reverse the order (The professor is a big fan of bellbottoms).
If you think your position is unassailable, commit suicide.

Dr. Knight-Gowan's methods are controversial, but so far, none of her followers have ever tested positive for dogmabotulism.

Good Luck.