The world today is a hotbed of competing
ideologies, the result of the tendency towards abstraction of the modern
(over-) educated mind. I wrote in a comment elsewhere that all ideologies
are evil because they are attempts to impose thought on reality and reality
comes before thought so should never be required to submit to it. This point
also has a connection with the previous post so let
me expand on it a bit here.
Fundamentally, I hold that ideologies are
both evil and violent which are obviously strong words, especially when used to
apply to any ideology regardless of what it is. But I use them because I see ideologies as attempts by man to force reality into the
straitjacket of thought as opposed to him living naturally and harmoniously
with reality, conforming his being to that instead of expecting that to conform
to him. This implies that anyone living according to an ideology is rejecting
God and living dualistically meaning there is always a division between the
person as what he is and his behaviour as what he does instead of the two being
one. Hence it is always artificial.
Christianity is not an ideology in essence
(though it can become one) because it is based on revelation of reality and love. Islam is an ideology since it is based on
submission to authority. It is also the product of one man's mind because
even if, for the sake of argument, there was some revelation in the Koran, that is clearly deeply overlaid by the thought of Muhammad. Buddhism is not an
ideology in essence because it is based on the experience of a man who had
transcended the limitations of thought. Hinduism is many things but at
its heart in the Vedas there is direct insight, though this too has become
overlaid by human opinion.
Thought separates man from God. Ideology
is thought pursued to the limit. This is not to denigrate thought per
se but to put it in its place and that place is as a builder not an
architect. Thought is there to clothe instinct and intuition with form and help
them to manifest in the world. It is not there to usurp their function of
insight into reality, unconscious or conscious, and when
it does the result is chaos and disorder. Thought as master places man
outside creation and makes of him an exile from reality. Ideologies are all towers of Babel, man's attempts to dethrone God.
5 comments:
I can't remember where I read it, but someone once described the difference between ideas and ideology in the following manner - people possess ideas; ideologies possess people. You elaborate on this idea well in this post.
@William. Yes, I agree: ideologies (such as nationalism and socialism) are what replaced Christianity as it began to be abandoned; therefore they are intrinsically evil and will tend to greater evil (even when they contain significant good, as some ideologies do in their early days).
I guess somewhere along the line even God was swept under the rug of ideology. As a result, we have theory-believers criticising atheists, and atheists criticising religion, whereas the root problem of ideology as the fallen aspect of the human mind is overlooked. Between the lines of official discourse we can spot the face of Satan himself, rearing his many ugly heads towards eachother. This is the secret our society keeps hiding. Yet, to the modern mind, it seems childish, because it is blindfolded and held hostage by faulty assumptions, and pacified by modern comforts. It is to afraid to face its own psychology.
Everything "seems" alright until you notice there is a burglar hiding in your closet. Once you have seen through the viel, denying evil won't be as easy anymore. The Devil doesn't like to get spotted in daylight, and once he does, storms will come. Indeed, it is already happening, as you have written before things are coming to a point. The bad and the good are becomin more discernible.
I think you are right to say that ideology is inherently violent. This begins with the violence ideology does to reality, but then necessarily continues in the violence that the ideologues do to dissenters. If it were to become public doctrine that the oceans are filled with lemonade, that would violate nature, but no end of violence against people would be necessary to uphold the doctrine. My experience is that ideologues are generally more prone to anger than realists. Not invariably, of course. But it is generally the case that, the more outlandish the idea, the greater the rage against dissenters. In contrast, we seldom get mad at a crazy men for failing to see that their ideas are crazy.
Yes, that's an excellent point JM (if I may!). It hadn't occurred to me but it's true that the violence inherent in ideology itself often does translate to violence against those who oppose or even don't fully accept the ideology.
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