A distorted prism

Subject: A distorted prism

I'm not sure which is the most worthwhile. A life of tempering the mind to fulfill a new profile for one to follow in this human journey through the years we spend on earth 'or' simply relying on an open Interrogation and interaction with the people around us and the part we play, with them in that passage.

If I were to become a monk and define myself by my beliefs, attaining some sort of purification by defining the mind and the thoughts it thinks, which in turn defines our actions towards people in general, is this process collectively beneficial other than to the individual undertaking the hours of study and meditation.
Do the people who crusade against the ills of the world who set themselves against what they perceive to be bad, do they have any worthwhile traction in what we might perceive as worthwhile or is worthwhile purely subjective.
There is nothing more single minded or in fact more cruel than a religious evangelist who seem to reward or damn with equal fervor. There can only be one path and because of the opaque nature of belief the path is often based on at best a speculative assumption dressed up as fact. Fact is misunderstood for belief and with the absolute surety which belief poses to a willing mind, any attempt to rationalise is verboten.

The term being 'political' with my 'fast held belief' is leveled if one attempts to argue. The discussion becomes heated because the 'surety' comes into question and when one has spent so much time and effort defining yourself in terms of what you believe it is difficult to fathom any reason a person would doubt you in your analysis.

The atheist in effect is winging it through life on the gamble that his rationality is sufficiently robust not to need to commit to either a life of blind faith or to the hours and years of committed study as to the cause of our existence.
The atheist doesn't have the answers other than 'there can be no answer' to what lies around him other than what can be tested by rational thought. His assumption that he is what he is by an act of Darwinistic chance and that natural selection, through the chromosomes and the genetic soup which concoct his person at the moment of conception, is for good or for bad. The part that nurture and environment  play are also acknowledged but in the end you are what you are. Tinkering with the mind in an effort to determine more is a bit like the problem in quantum physics where to observe a particular of quantum proportions effects the partial so radically it moves in time and space to be elsewhere. 
So perhaps the zealous over interrogation of purpose when it comes to the mind also distorts it into becoming something not real, something which in the asking of the questions put too much stress on the outcome that the person asking becomes not only someone else but lives in a reality which is also distorted.