2015 has been a particularly dark year. Scenes of terrorism, dead babies on beaches, people fleeing war and destruction, and floods not to mention countless other tragedies have dominated the media in 2015. One recurrent theme has been extremism. Will extremism triumph? Will terrorism prevail? Can light overcome the darkness? Can flourishing prevail?
Daesh, or more commonly known as ISIS, is a death cult. It focuses on death and destruction. It is black and white without any shades of grey. It’s view of the world is bleak. If you’re not one of them, even if you’re Muslim but the wrong kind of Muslim, you must be destroyed. What, then, is the appeal? A sense of belonging? A sense of order? Does it appeal to certain personality types that like nice neat tidy categories that put a messy confusing world into nice neat boxes? Is it about a search for identity? If it’s about identity, why does asserting one’s own identity mean the destruction of other identities? Why can’t there be multiple identities and why can’t one person even be comprised of multiple fluid identities?
But Daesh doesn’t have the market cornered on extremism. What about the atheistic extremism of Richard Dawkins where any religious identity/faith is construed as being pathological and immature? What about the rigid categories constructed by strict secularism, French laïcité (://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/La%C3%AFcit%C3%A9) for example, where the religious or transcendent is ruthlessly eliminated from the public sphere? What about the extreme dogmatism of the religious right in America where only one kind of Christian identity and politics is construed as the right one?
The examples above are all at risk of promoting death, maybe not literal death, but figurative death, of anyone, of any identities that don’t fit the magic black and white categories. They can, like Daesh, also be cults that worship and promote death.
In a flourishing world on the other hand, there are multiple and plural ways of being in the world. Flourishing means promoting the growth and wellbeing of another, even if they are different, other, not like me. Flourishing is 3D, riotous colours, spirals, bridges, fluid, messy, chaotic, ever changing, willing to change, learning, growing and about life. It’s about finding one’s significance and meaning in this world without diminishing the significance and meaning of others. It is not dualistic. It celebrates the physical and the transcendent, finding transcendence in everyday life. It locates eternity, past, present and future, in the moment. It is about finding the fun and sense of humour in every day moments. It’s about daily gratitude for the big and small events, family and friends, things that light up our moments and our days. It’s about hope for the future—today can be better than yesterday.
What does flourishing look like to you? Can we all light a candle to banish the darkness? What candle of gratitude, flourishing and hope will you light as 2016 begins? Promote life, not terrorism and fear. Otherwise the death cults win.