The Naked and the Epistemologically Deadening: Understanding FIDUROD

The routines of FIDUROD have become so deeply ingrained in the thinking of contemporary Western peoples that such an epistemology has become the cultural commonsense of the world of the upwardly mobile and the socio-politically and economically privileged. Yet, what is fascinating about this epistemological dynamic is that at the same time it becomes this collective commonsense, there is a growing dis-ease with its consequences for individuals and the human species in general. Because there is no public conversation about such issues and epistemology is a word at this point used only in academia, there is no language, no conceptual lexicon with which to address the issues raised here in the popular space. Thus, at the end of the first decade of the twenty-first century we see individuals struggling to make sense of what’s missing in their lives.

The rise of religious fundamentalism around the world is not unconnected to these dynamics. In addition, what Philip Wexler (2000) has brilliantly labeled “the mystical society” with diverse peoples exploring and reevaluating mystical traditions from a variety of sources also reflects this gnawing discomfort with the unnamed epistemological and ontological foundations of contemporary colonialistic Western social orientations. In many ways it is apparent that the wider public has been more insightful about the poverty of a mechanistic worldview than have most of the representatives of the educational establishment. This should be a humbling revelation to many academics, but for the most part they have dismissed this public discomfort as a manifestation of the irrationality of the under-educated masses. They have missed that which is profound in such feelings and intuitions. With these dynamics in mind, let us continue with our description of the characteristics of FIDUROD.