Fanaticism

While we usually talk of political fanaticism, such as Islamism that seeks to take over the world, there are other kinds. Now that I go twice a week to the gym I see examples of people putting the shape of their bodies before anything else in a clearly fanatical way.
I do admire the young men whose muscles bulge with power, and I told my trainer, Yuri, that when I come back again I'm going to ask for his body. But, there are some young men I see tying huge weights to their waists and then doing pull ups, or lifting weights that are clearly at or beyond the limits of their capability. I also admire some of the young women, only from an esthetic point of view. But, there is one young woman that is always on the ellipitcal (ski) machine when I am there twice a week, when I arrive and when I leave, and she is racing at such a fast pace (sprinting actually) that it is inhuman. I asked about her and they told me she does that for 4 hrs four days a week. To me this is a kind of fanaticism. She is already very thin, and probably bulemic, and yet she is there racing away staring into space all the time I am at the gym. It is positively disturbing, there must be something wrong with her.
But, in her case we can see the nature of her fanaticism, it is aberrant human behavior. We have all seen the videos of young women who have starved themselves to death thinking in their minds that they are fat. This happened to a young Israeli fashion model Hila Elmalich who died last year, and they established a fund in her name and introduced rules for Model agencies and shows here.
But, in the case of political fanaticism we cannot see the visual signs of the disease until it is too late and people have been blown up. We usually deal with the political basis of such acts, but in reality, although there may be rational and/or irrational political reasons/excuses for these acts of terrorism, in effect it is a human disease. This disease of the mind that allows people to kill others without qualms. I know that the woman in the gym is ill, and is not harming anyone else but herself. But, when I see her it reinforces the notion that fanaticism is a disease and that there are a certain proportion of young men and women in different cultures that are by nature fanatics. They come out of the woodwork when the times are ripe, as in Europe during WWII, as in the Balkans recently, and for a long time in the Middle East. It seems that political grievances, especially feelings of inadequacy and defeat, combined with Islamist theology, bring out this fanaticism in many Muslim youth.