Fundamentalist

     The word "fundamentalist" contains the word "fundamental" as its root. A fundamentalist can therefor be defined as  one who stresses the fundamentals. Not only religions, but all fields have certain beleifs and practices that are fundamental to them and therefor have potential fundamentalist. The word "fundamentalist" has recently received a negative connotation but being a fundamentalist is not inherently bad. In fact, being a fundamentalist can be a good thing. Whenever we start anything we should start by learning the fundamentals. My high school football coach was a fundamentalist. He believed the fundamentals of football where blocking and tackling and he did not let us start scrimmages until we mastered the fundamentals. In order to master a given field we must practice the fundamentals until they become a part of who we are as they are engraved on our neuronal circuits. There is nothing more beautiful than watching a dancer, who has mastered the fundamentals of a style of dance, let go with reckless abandon and let the fundamentals she has taken years to instill take over. 
          There are, however, potential problems with being a fundamentalist.  One is they can become stuck on the fundamentals and refuse to grow beyond them. For example, a pianist who continues to play the same scales over and over again and refuses to play any music even after mastering the scales. 
       Another problem is choosing the wrong fundamentals. The essential nature of any group of fundamentalist is dependent on the fundamentals they chose. If they chose love and peace than they will become a more loving and peaceful group the more radical fundamentalists they become. Take for example the Amish. They are certainly as an extreme a group of fundamentalist as you can get, but when their young children where raped and killed, they not only forgave their killer but took up a collection for his family. This is because one of their Christian fundamentals is forgiveness. The opposite, however, would happen for a group that had the opposite fundamentals. Some people support their bigoted view against all fundamentalist based on some fundamentalist groups that seem to have made hate and revenge their fundamentals.