To understand is to perceive patterns.

"To understand is to perceive patterns."

Isaiah Berlin
British historian of ideas

Photo: Wood grain patterns in a 1600 year-old Bristlecone Pine; Cedar Breaks National Monument, UT; September 1, 2012.

Fundamentalisms of all sorts - religious, cultural or political - practice a rudimentary form of intelligence that causes adherents to look at their own views as though they are unique in the history of thought.  By contrast, a person using a more advanced intelligence is able to step outside his or her own view in order to see the ways in which it is similar to seemingly different views.  We are desperately in need of the latter in our time.