IDEOLOGIES
Wed. May 17th, 2023
Religions as the Largest and
Longest-Lived Category of Ideologies
For the first
three thousand years after writing was invented, all ideologies were religions,
or working parts of religions (for example, the ideology that kings were the
shepherds of their people was a working part of the religion of the ancient Israelites).
Ideologies and the Invention of Writing
After writing
was invented, we can study ideologies by studying texts -- by reading things
which have been written, ancient and modern.
People almost certainly had ideologies before writing was invented, but
studying those ideologies today is much much harder. We have to deduce what we can from studying
what articles people wanted their surviving relatives to bury with them after
they died -- articles that could survive (or at least leave traces) in the earth
in the vicinity of the skeleton of the dead person, so that we can study them
-- "grave goods" -- thousands of years later. But for the period after writing was invented,
we have whole books we can study, filled with ancient ideas -- and ideas are
the stuff of ideologies.
The Great Ideologies
Colleges teach
courses on the great religions of the world.
Perhaps in the future there will be college courses on the great
ideologies of the world. These could be
of two kinds -- good courses on the great ideologies, and bad courses on the
great ideologies. The bad courses on the
great ideologies will omit religions entirely, based on the false assumption
that religions are not ideologies. The
good courses on the great ideologies will include religions -- while also including
Karl Marx and Ayn Rand.
In other words,
if religion and political science are two different college subjects -- two
different disciplines -- then the good courses on the great ideologies are
going to be interdisciplinary.
Why Do People Have Ideologies?
Ideologies are
not a disease of the human brain. They
provide a system for integrating knowledge of the world with beliefs about desirable
behavior. Most people want an organizing
system which does that kind of integrating.
There can be, I
think, a small number of people who organize their knowledge and beliefs
without an ideology. Trying to do
without an ideology is like organizing your knowledge and beliefs using Library
of Congress Subject Headings. Subject
headings were a system invented by librarians -- including a lot in the United
States -- for finding books on a particular topic in large libraries -- a
system that achieved its highest level of success and sophistication in the
last years before computer catalogs for libraries were invented and reached a
certain level of competence -- after which subject headings gradually faded out
of the picture as a way to help people find books on a topic in libraries.
Basically, a
large set of subject headings, such as the Library of Congress Subject
Headings, provide a way to put topics in alphabetical order in a catalog, with
cross-references leading back and forth between related ideas and/or different
names for the same idea.
Something like a
system of subject headings could, in theory, function as an alternative to an
ideology as a way to organize knowledge and beliefs in a person's brain . Not so much the alphabetical order, but the
cross-references.
Oppression. See also Discrimination.
Hate. See also Oppression.
Discrimination, Types of. See, for example, Racial discrimination.
If any one of us
could have neural pathways in our brain connecting different but related topics
like that -- to assist us in the storage and retrieval of relevant memories, and
relevant ideas that we have learned from reading and from hearing the talk of
wiser heads like our parents and teachers -- then -- well -- wow.
But an ideology
is simpler than having hundreds or thousands of home-made cross-references in
our brain. In fact, buying into an
ideology is a lot like inheriting a set of cross-references from our ancestors. Or to make another metaphor, specifically for
people who read, buying into an ideology is sort of like purchasing a set of
great books, to organize the less fun-oriented part of your reading.
If looked at
from a point of view like that, ideologies do not seem like a dumb idea.
But Ideologies Do Start Wars
But ideologies
do start wars. For many centuries in our
history, those wars are labeled the "wars of religion."
But for the
twentieth century, one can call those wars the "economic theory
wars." In the twentieth century, the
ideological wars were the shooting wars that
were fought between two competing economic theories, capitalism and communism.
In the future,
there will be other ideologies, and those ideologies will be competing with
each other, and will give rise to new categories of ideological wars. By wars, we mean people killing each other
because of their differing beliefs -- usually people pre-organized into
nations.
Really, being
starry-eyed about the future of human history is just a dumb idea. Ideological wars are a bad thing, but how can
we stop people from fighting them -- it isn't any different from asking how can
we stop people from murdering other people.
Do you really believe that we
will get noticeably closer to an ideal universe in the next ten generations?
The Future and the Past
In our day and
time, people are enamored of the future.
People say that the future is where we will live the rest of our
lives. But our ideas cannot come from
the future. Our ideas can only come from
an organized knowledge of our experience -- which is our past.
What we carry
with us into the future is our experience of human nature, and our experience
of the natures of the other beings and creatures we live with on our planet.
DO NOT underestimate
the importance of our past as a resource for planning for our future. HE WHO ignores our experience of human nature
is a fool.
Wars and Self-Sacrifice
Wars are the
main part of human life where people sacrifice their lives for a cause.
Wars are fought
between nations, but different nations often make different choices between
competing ideologies. Then a war is not
only fought between two nations -- or many nations lined up on two sides -- but
it is also fought between two ideologies.
But to restate
the previous point, wars are an arena where sacrifices take place --
specifically, an arena where people sacrifice their lives for a greater good or
cause.
The word
"arena" is both literal and metaphorical. In the literal sense, the ancient Colosseum
in Rome was built around an arena where Christians sacrificed their lives for
an ideology, namely their religious beliefs.
But while we are
talking about the Colosseum, we should also mention that people sacrificed
their lives for other causes in that Roman circle of bleachers for shows. Gladiators also sacrificed their lives according
to the principle that one man is killed, and the other man is fed at the public
expense; while crowds of people of average and below-average virtue came to
watch.
Animal Sacrifice
The idea of
sacrifice is very ancient in the human mind.
Animals were sacrificed. But animal
sacrifices were, in their origin, a performance of a ritual before eating
meat. The ritual included the killing of
the animal -- which is necessary before eating it. When the ritual is removed -- as it is in
modern times , aside from the saying of grace -- the animal still has to be
killed to be eaten. But in modern technologically
advanced societies, the animal is killed out of sight of most of the eaters. It would actually make sense to say that in
the United States today, and many other parts of the world, most of the eaters
of the meat are paying NOT to have to watch the killing of the animal.
Self-Sacrifice
We can assume
that the idea of self-sacrifice is also ancient. Wars are an ancient human behavior, and when
one side wins a war, the survivors can say that the dead sacrificed their lives
for the sake of their group, their tribe, their village, their kingdom.
Usually one side
loses a war, and then other words are used; the winning side may use the words
"dying in vain." But the group,
the tribe, the village, the kingdom that lost the war can still say that the
dead sacrificed their lives for the group.
They can still honor their dead.
People remote
from the experience of war can say that the idea of sacrifice is "a
fancy" or "a fantasy" or a "tendentious
interpretation." But if we inquire
carefully into people's emotions and behavior, we find that many people are
sincere in honoring their country's dead.
Ultimately, the gratitude and its sincerity, if present, is the longest
surviving memory of the war by its survivors (as opposed to its historians).
Another Form of Sacrifice
Then there is a
form of sacrifice where human beings sacrifice human beings other than
themselves. We call this human
sacrifice. It is ancient too. It needs to be mentioned, because if we do
not mention it, our classification of types of sacrifice will be a failure. But for this essay, we do not need to dwell on
it. It was also accompanied by ritual.
Ideology and Its Sacrifices
The types of
sacrifice which we have described are major forms of sacrifice. Major forms of sacrifice are always tied in
with ideologies. Part of the function of
ideologies is to justify and honor sacrifices.
Sacrifices are
an important theme in the Bible. In the
book of Genesis, Abraham almost sacrifices his son Isaac based on words which
Abraham heard his God say. At the last
minute, Isaac's life was spared when an angel provided an animal -- a ram --
for Abraham to sacrifice instead.
Long ago, some
silly ancient fool tacked on a moral to that story, that Abraham was rewarded
-- he received the reward of not having to kill his son, and a blessing along
with it -- because Abraham was
prepared to obey the command which he heard from his God.
But a human
being -- one who can fight their way free of the ideological clutter which is the
overstock of every single human brain -- can easily see that that is not the
moral of the story of Abraham, and Isaac, and the knife, and the bundle of
firewood. The moral of the story is that
it is better to sacrifice an animal in worshipping God, than it is to sacrifice
a human being in worshipping God. God set
up the situation so that this point sank in unforgettably with Abraham, and unforgettably
with Abraham's descendants in perpetuity.
And some fool
sneaked into the story the idea that it is a story about obedience. But the truth is that if Abraham had said to
God "Lord, I will not sacrifice my son on your altar" then God would
have said to Abraham "Blessed are you, Abraham, and blessed will be your
descendants forever, because you knew that I your God will never lay human
sacrifice upon you as a duty." Hear,
O Israel: hear, O United States: hear, all ye followers of the Abrahamic
religions: The belaying of the order to kill Isaac was God's plan from the
beginning! God made an impression on
Abraham his worshipper, and the impression remains with all of Abraham's
children unto this day. That is the real moral of this story in the Bible.
This story shows
that our ideas about sacrifice are regulated by our ideologies. And sometimes, when some ancient anonymous fool
has tacked on a false moral to a story about sacrifice, we can still fight our
way free to appreciating the real
moral of the story in our hearts -- even if we cannot find the words to get the
real moral across our tongues.
Sacrifices may
also be an important theme in the sacred books of other religions. But the current writer is without any
knowledge on that topic or question.
But the fool's
moral does advance the ideology of war.
Men like Abraham do expose their sons to the danger of losing their
lives for the sake of their country. And
obedience is the key to understanding the sacrifices people make in wars. But when that happens, it is a self-sacrifice
by Isaac. Abraham returns thanks to God
for the bravery and obedience of his son.
But when a son goes to war, his father does not carry the knife. His father does not order his son to carry
firewood as part of a plan that the father will tie up his son and kill him and
burn him on an altar. The knowledge of
these things is an unstated but implicit
but very, very deep part of the ideology of the Abrahamic religions.
A New and Despicable Ideology, Not Yet
Named, in My Country
There is a new
ideology walking up and down and going hither and yon in my country, as yet
unnamed. It is the ideology that says
all politicians are crooked and corrupt.
We could call it the ideology of distrust or mistrust.
This ideology is
worthless and immature. If you have a
low opinion of the honesty of your leaders, it can only be because you have a
low opinion of your own honesty. Every
honest person knows that some leaders are honest, and other leaders are to
various degrees dishonest. Honest
citizens have a special sense of smell which helps them determine which of
their leaders are honest.
The ideology of
distrust can only lead to one outcome, namely the replacement of our democracy
and republic -- the political ideology we have inherited from the writers of
our constitution -- with a dictatorship. With a dictatorship comes a Hobson's choice of
no voting or only pretend voting, in which the votes are not honestly counted.
A Sort of Conclusion
Joni Mitchell
wrote a song about trying to look at things from both sides. In this essay, we tried to look at ideologies
from several different sides. We tried
to talk about the good side of ideologies, and the bad side of ideologies. We suggested that human ideologies are
closely connected with war -- war as an activity which human beings take part
in -- and closely connected with every major kind of sacrifice.
At the end of
this essay, we can only ask people to think about their ideologies. We can only ask people not to approach ideologies
as a mere object of loathing. But then we
can also only ask people -- especially survivors -- to examine their ideology
with respect, but also with every ounce of intelligence which they can
muster.
Frank Newton
