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Your friend just has a case of "-ism".

Isms are bad. You should never follow an Ism to its complete extent. Almost everything can be tamed with exceptions and exclusions, consensus and compromise, temperance and tolerance, and to completely devote yourself to a single-minded brand of blind faith is, well, blind.

Whenever you have a blind faith belief in something – it doesn't matter what that something is – you open the door for atrocities to occur. Anyone can be brought to the bidding of their superiors, or be compelled to commit any heinous or unspeakable act, for the sake of strict adherence to a format of social control.

There is a commonality of blind faith in all the extremisms of past ages, from fundamentalist theocracies to military dictatorships, from the totalitarian nation-states of the twentieth century to the Inquisitions of medieval Europe. The holder of a blind faith is static in a constantly changing Universe. It is not what they believe in that's so dangerous – the exact particulars of the belief are quite irrelevant – but to the extent that they will defend their beliefs. This is true of zealots from every facet of civilization, from politics to religion, law, war, culture, race and industry. It is also true for value systems that people show unwavering fealty toward, from holy books to Constitutions.

Everything comes down to a fundamental assumption of faith. But it's how faith is upheld that matters. If you believe in something absolutely from a position of blind faith then you will defend it absolutely from a position of blind faith. There is no room for interpretation: It is 100% true, absolute, and beyond question. You will seek out and destroy its opponents as they are threats to its wisdom and self-evident superiority. You are capable of dying for it and you are capable of killing for it. You are capable of being told to kill for it, and you accept conquest or annihilation as the only logical courses of action. There is no middle ground.

If we wish to live in an ethical world where atrocities do not occur, then we must reject blind faith and accept critical evaluation (but don't do this blindly, of course). The reason for this is quite simple: If you recognize the possibility that your basic assumptions might not be absolutely correct, then you will be much more tolerant of someone who disagrees with your assumptions. Moreover, you will not perceive their opposition as a threat to yours. You will disagree, but you will not die, and you will not kill for your convictions. The door to a better world lies down this path.

So beware anyone who tries to get you to accept something completely and totally on an absolute principle of blind faith, for they think themselves masters of your soul. If you're going to be swept up that easily by a new cult, populist movement or political rally, you might as well join the army and get it over with.

The great golden digger wasp has a peculiar behavioral pattern whenever she returns to her nest with her prey. Like any sensible burrow dweller, she first inspects the nest to make sure nothing has occupied it in her absence, leaving her paralyzed prize near the entrance. When she's satisfied that the coast is clear, she comes out, grabs her quarry and buries it alive for her brood. If she comes out and notices that her prey has moved, she will drag it back to the original spot and re-inspect the nest. If she comes out and the prey has moved again, she will drag it back and re-inspect the nest again. And over and over. As if stuck in a feedback loop, she keeps re-inspecting the nest even when she just checked it a few seconds ago. It never occurs to her to just pull the prey straight it.

This specific pattern of behavior is so hard-coded, so autonomic, and so damn funny that the wasp can be held in this state indefinitely, constantly rechecking the nest every time prankster scientists push her prey around with a pencil. She is not able to logically deduce what is happening. This behavior, called genetic fixity, is otherwise known as sphexishness after the digger wasp's scientific name sphex because this is a pretty famous experiment and scientists don't get out much.

As it turns out, this type of hardcoded behavior is pretty common in the animal kingdom. Pigeons, for instance, are slave to patterns just like the digger wasp however they will only repeat patterns that lead to good results. There's another famous experiment that affirms this because pigeons are just as fun to mess around with as digger wasps.

If some pigeons are placed in a box with a button that dispenses food, they will quickly figure out how to use the button. If the button's conditions are changed so that it dispenses food every third push, the pigeons will still figure out how to use the button. But if the button's conditions are changed so that it dispenses food after a random number of pushes, the pigeons will exhibit odd, patterned behavior. For instance, if a pigeon scratches its feathers a certain way before pushing the button and food is dispensed, the pigeon will repeat that scratch every time it pushes the button hoping for identical results. Before long, an elaborate repertoire of rituals occupies each pigeon. Some turn counter-clockwise twice while others stretch their wings and push the button while standing on one foot. Without understanding why the button sometimes gives food and sometimes doesn't, their brains give way to superstition. They are desperately looking for a pattern in something that is inherently patternless, using themselves as the qualifier.

This is also true with humans. Our tendency toward pattern recognition and adherence is no different than the behavior of wasps or pigeons, albeit with layers of abstraction on top. The first time we do something is results-oriented: We just want to get it done. Each subsequent time is process-oriented: We want to get it done faster, better and more efficiently. This is every student's first day at school or an employee's first week at the job.

The good news is the natural world is pretty well-patterned so being an overly-aggressive pattern-finder isn't a terrible handicap.

Probably the one thing man does that no animal does to a complete extent is anticipatory behavior – the ability to detect causes and consequences in events. Humans plan based on what they think will happen next, not on what is happening now. We observe, examine, extrapolate, record, and react to changing conditions. And we pass on this knowledge to future generations for continuity (but don't feel too special because man is also the only expert at killing large quantities of itself).

Anticipatory behavior was a crucial first step toward security, stability and comfort in ancient living. Neolithic man developed an awareness of weather patterns when he noticed that certain rivers always flooded on certain days of the year, naturally irrigating the land. By hanging around these floodplains and building permanent settlements, a replenishing supply of food was secured.

But sometimes the rivers didn't flood and people panicked because it broke the pattern that they were so reliant on, leading to anxiety, famine and chaos. Man wondered if there was something he needed to do to solve the riddle of the capricious weather. Maybe a rain dance or two would work. Or a human sacrifice. And sometimes, just by coincidence, his kooky actions did work. So he repeated those actions every time he needed the weather to cooperate, unaware of what true effect his actions had if any. This is known as a false positive result, an error in logic and reason, and is the basis of every superstition, religion, and belief that humans have ever had. Superstition is a form of ego – people believe that their actions are causal.

Human anxiety comes from trepidation about the future. We are built to anticipate future events and one of the strongest human fears is uncertainty about what happens next. When things change, it is a common tendency of man to resist these changes. We cannot anticipate the dangers the changes may bring us. We develop false positives in attempts to find order amidst chaos, because what we can control cannot hurt us. And we do it without even trying or noticing. Try it: Turn your television to a channel with all snow and watch it intently for a bit. After awhile you'll start to see patterns but they're not really there. It's pareidolia – your brain attempting to organize the mess in front of you into something orderly and recognizable. A psychotic delusion brought on by your own mind fighting with reality and trying to make sense of it.

The point of this tl;dr is that dischord -- pure Erisian Dischord -- is ultimately futile. However anarchic and free you may feel yourself being, at a fundamental level you are still a slave to your own pattern-worshipping thought processes. You want order. You love structure. Over time, you tend toward routine and regimen, a microcosm of the Universe tending toward thermal equilibrium or entropy. You cannot ever embrace chaos however much you prefer it. Like a gyroscope returning to equilibrium whichever direction you push it one way or another, your brain simply won't let you.

navkat told me to post this.

Snails are hermaphrodites. They have their penises located in their heads which they use to jab into each other like hypodermic needles in a really long, elaborate mating ritual called "penis fencing".

The loser is the one who gets stabbed first and suffers the deleterious effects of traumatic insemination.