BELIEVE IT......or NOT.
Introduction to the Kooks Museum
1. What is a kook?
Please allow me to quote from the Introduction to my book,
Kooks: A Guide to the Outer Limits of Human Belief (copyright Donna Kossy and Feral House, 1994):
The word "kook" was coined by the beatniks, as a pared-down version of "cuckoo," as in "going cuckoo." A kook is a person stigmatized by virtue of outlandish, extreme or socially unacceptable beliefs that underpin their entire existence. Kooks usually don't keep their beliefs to themselves; they either air them constantly or create lasting monuments to them.
Though I have great affection for kooks, the term is usually used by others on a pejorative basis; the word is often invoked but rarely aimed at oneself. Granted, there are people, self-styled or corporate-styled bohemians, who by virtue of their desire to belong to a particular in-crowd, call themselves kooks as easily as saying, "I'm weird" or "I'm crazy." I am not concerned here with a trendy or self-conscious usage of the term.
Being assigned kook status is inherently a matter of perspective, relative to history and culture. A kook of the 19th century might become a scientific hero in the 20th. Take the example of geologist Alfred Wegener (1880-1930), who hypothesized continental drift. In his day, Wegener's theory was dismissed as a "fairy tale." More recently he is honored for originating the theory of plate tectonics. More frequently, a person presumed to be a genius in a previous century is regarded a kook in today's. In the 19th century, phrenologists were as respectable as psychiatrists are today.
Similarly, the beliefs and mores of one culture are mocked as kooky or even sinister by another. On a large scale, the projection of these attitudes can mobilize millions into warfare or cause governments to deploy military assaults against "cults."
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