I have commented on ideology here before, but have never given it the proper whacking I feel it deserves. In the past I have mentioned ideology in the context of other subjects, such as politics, economics, religion, and science. Today I'm going to attempt to address ideology on its own; my interpretation of its problematic effect upon society, and a proposal for how we might move beyond it.
* * * * * * *
I suppose that my aversion to ideology - all ideology - never truly rests. In the last decade I've come to the conclusion that ideology is, at best, stultifying, and at worst, globally destructive. My observations of the participation of individuals, groups, and worldwide society have left me with a consistent personal need to separate myself from ideology and a strong desire to abandon it in every way I can.
Before I dive into my own subjective thinking about all of this, let me first give as much objective conventional information as I can.
Merriam-Webster gives I think what most people most often think...
Full Definition of ideologyThe above definitions certainly touch upon my own interpretation, in a way. But they neglect what I consider to be an important detail; one which I will explain in a moment. After looking up the word in several other sources and finding essentially the same wording--with an emphasis on politics, I think that I prefer Wikipedia's initial definition...
plural ideologies
1
: visionary theorizing
2
a : a systematic body of concepts especially about human life or culture
b : a manner or the content of thinking characteristic of an individual, group, or culture
c : the integrated assertions, theories and aims that constitute a sociopolitical program
Ideology is a collection of beliefs held by an individual, group or society. It can be described as a set of conscious and unconscious ideas which make up one's beliefs, goals, expectations, and motivations.Official definitions are not ends in and of themselves. They are starting points for common ground in the discussion of singular concepts. Each of us has our own mental dictionary composed of our individual interpretation of concepts. And sometimes, we may hold several individual definitions at once, using them respectively to address the angles of a concept. The context of a discussion is made more accessible by choosing a specific definition, while keeping in mind that all others (whether one's own or those of another) may remain valid in alternative contexts.
I mentioned above that my own interpretation for the concept of ideology in the context of this essay has an important detail that needs to be added to the conventional sources already mentioned in order to make my point. I must also narrow the aforementioned definitions for consistency. Therefore, I offer the following...
My Interpretation of Ideology
An ideology is any collection of beliefs held by an individual, group or society, which do not originate from a non-human source (like the natural world or supernatural world).
In this way, only a human individual can either formulate an original ideology from within his or her own mind or adopt another individual human's ideology as his or her own. I contend that in nearly all cases, ideologies have a one-individual origin.
Once an ideology is formulated and adopted, an individual is then compelled to disseminate that ideology, as clearly as they can understand it's original intention, to other individuals. Consequently, groups form with a particular ideology at their core. Groups with an ideology that is straightforward and easily disseminated by their member, tend to be the ones that dominate a society.
Again, it is important to restate that the process whereby some individual's belief - once codified as an ideology and adopted by a group who then dominates a society - is not a pattern found in nature, aside from the functioning of human behavior.
Before I expand upon this, let us remove one particular bit of confusion that sometimes creeps into understanding the static thought patterns of ideology versus the dynamic belief systems built up by adopting of philosophies...
The Difference Between Ideology and Philosophy
Philosophy vs Ideology
There are very fundamental differences between philosophy and ideology. Ideology refers to a set of beliefs, doctrines that back a certain social institution or a particular organization. Philosophy refers to looking at life in a pragmatic manner and attempting to understand why life is as it is and the principles governing behind it.
Ideology expresses dissatisfaction with the current state and aspires to be some future state whereas philosophy tries to understand the world in its current state. In other words, ideology is aimed at changing the world whereas philosophy is aimed at seeking the truth.
Ideology is rigid and once fixed on certain beliefs, refuses to change its stance irrespective of any change in the surrounding environment. Challenging an ideologue can be the most difficult task. A philosopher, on the other hand, may arrive on some construct for the basis of life and other things but will be willing to discuss and ponder other philosophies. A philosopher is open minded and willing to listen to criticism whereas an ideologue will refute anything challenging his or her ideology outright. This also suggests that while philosophy encourages people to think, ideology discourages any thinking that goes against the basic doctrines that govern the ideology.
[Snip]The above is very direct about the limitations of ideology. Once adopted by one individual or a group of individuals as a core belief, ideology loses its ability to be tweaked or altered. Only that ideology can fill the niche it has carved out for itself. The eyes, ears, and minds of the individuals who have chosen said ideology are to be figuratively (and under extreme conditions, literally) sealed shut in the context for which that ideology is thought to provide its usefulness. No fundamental change is permitted, lest the chaos of redefining the ideology be required.
Group Ideology
From this point forward it is more appropriate in this essay to rename the individuals who now comprise the group as...members. On the group level of ideological adoption, social and/or political power may be wielded in proportion to how easily the group's ideology can be explained by members of the group and thence understood by individuals outside the group. Thus, the group membership is added to or subtracted from accordingly. Leaders of the group must then function as high priests of, or intercessors for, the core ideology; praising it when growth occurs and defending it when defections threaten that growth.
Presently, the ideology is stripped down to its most basic components and solidified. This saves the members of the group from having to interpret the ideological points. All they need to do is repeat them to people outside of the group. For the members, the requirement becomes a simple matter of doing two things: (1) growing the group by adding new members who buy into the ideology, and (2) preserving the settled components of the core ideology. This is when things can begin to come undone.
Groups Have One Goal
Groups always have one overriding goal that is more important than preserving their ideology and the activities of their members. That one goal is: perpetuating the group, by any means necessary. This is the easiest thing to understand about groups. Accordingly, individual members, and even the ideology at the core of their group belief (counterintuitively), mean nothing to the group as a whole.
This is where the notion of a platform comes into being. Platforms carefully spell out a list of specific group tenets that are interdependent. Having an ideological platform means that out of five major ideological tenets, for example, all five must be carried together or risk losing platform cohesion. If you are a member of that group and you strongly agree with all but one tenet, you become a potential threat to the group as a whole. It is when this happens that the offending "heretic" learns that the wholesale belief in all tenets of an ideology precludes his or her liberty to take an opposite stance on any one of them. Each platform describing a group's core ideology requires individual members to agree with this list of tenets as the group's standard accessories.
Inevitably, some member of a group will always object to at least one tenet. Wishful thinking and propaganda about group unity will eventually lose momentum as time goes by and the friction of a growing, ever diversifying, membership tries to tow the same line. Family and friendships tend to supercede group loyalty--although, as we well-know, religious and political ideologies certainly can contentiously divide these more personal institutions. Nevertheless, the group member is very likely to find a sympathetic ear among closes acquaintances, and often these folks will be co-members of the same group in question. This higher personal loyalty can provide the virus of apostasy. And as the term implies, this interjection of divergent individual thought can be disastrous to groups--especially religious groups.
I think an example of the fallacy that assumes groups using ideology can have their unity maintained indefinitely while continuously growing their memberships and meeting the needs of the individual, is best demonstrated by the formation and then subsequent break up of the Roman Catholic Church, and thence Christianity in general.
I will simplify this extremely complex time line for brevity sake while attempting to suggest why it may serve as the ideal pattern for the rejection of ideology and its inevitable failure.
Through a series of early church councils occurring after the emperor Constantine, after his amazing change of heart, precipitated by a great vision, decriminalized and then adopted Christianity as the state religion of Roman Empire (with the Edict of Thessalonica in 380), the ideology he set in motion - being later tweaked, amended, reformed, codified and then solidified as "Church Doctrine" - became the core of a single group ("The Church") that dominated Europe and Mediterranean society until 1054.
After the historical person of Jesus was put to death, the religion that bore his name seen in the ancient world as passionate, novel, incredibly powerful; it appealed to all kinds of people across all borders, and spread faster than any other religion before or since then.
Suddenly the common man and woman could hope for eternal life, where once only kings and priests could expect life after death. The success of The Church during this period and its ability to secure itself as a extremely strong group based around its core of Christian ideology, made it the biggest influence of Western daily life that has ever been.
It must have seemed at that time that an eternal institution had been established on earth. But fate would decide otherwise.
In 1054 the first great split in The Church occurred (called the East-West Schism), creating a dual system. There was now the original Roman Catholic Church in the West, based in Rome, Italy, and the Eastern Orthodox Church in the East, based in Constantinople, Turkey (which Constantine had moved the Capital of Rome to in 330). This is a fascinating chapter of Christian history and well worth further study.
What once was a single group, had now divided into two groups. And, what was the cause of this split? You guessed it... a disagreement over certain tenets of their core ideology...
This is where the notion of a platform comes into being. Platforms carefully spell out a list of specific group tenets that are interdependent. Having an ideological platform means that out of five major ideological tenets, for example, all five must be carried together or risk losing platform cohesion. If you are a member of that group and you strongly agree with all but one tenet, you become a potential threat to the group as a whole. It is when this happens that the offending "heretic" learns that the wholesale belief in all tenets of an ideology precludes his or her liberty to take an opposite stance on any one of them. Each platform describing a group's core ideology requires individual members to agree with this list of tenets as the group's standard accessories.
The Pattern of Group Dissolution
I think an example of the fallacy that assumes groups using ideology can have their unity maintained indefinitely while continuously growing their memberships and meeting the needs of the individual, is best demonstrated by the formation and then subsequent break up of the Roman Catholic Church, and thence Christianity in general.
I will simplify this extremely complex time line for brevity sake while attempting to suggest why it may serve as the ideal pattern for the rejection of ideology and its inevitable failure.
Through a series of early church councils occurring after the emperor Constantine, after his amazing change of heart, precipitated by a great vision, decriminalized and then adopted Christianity as the state religion of Roman Empire (with the Edict of Thessalonica in 380), the ideology he set in motion - being later tweaked, amended, reformed, codified and then solidified as "Church Doctrine" - became the core of a single group ("The Church") that dominated Europe and Mediterranean society until 1054.
After the historical person of Jesus was put to death, the religion that bore his name seen in the ancient world as passionate, novel, incredibly powerful; it appealed to all kinds of people across all borders, and spread faster than any other religion before or since then.
Suddenly the common man and woman could hope for eternal life, where once only kings and priests could expect life after death. The success of The Church during this period and its ability to secure itself as a extremely strong group based around its core of Christian ideology, made it the biggest influence of Western daily life that has ever been.
It must have seemed at that time that an eternal institution had been established on earth. But fate would decide otherwise.
In 1054 the first great split in The Church occurred (called the East-West Schism), creating a dual system. There was now the original Roman Catholic Church in the West, based in Rome, Italy, and the Eastern Orthodox Church in the East, based in Constantinople, Turkey (which Constantine had moved the Capital of Rome to in 330). This is a fascinating chapter of Christian history and well worth further study.
What once was a single group, had now divided into two groups. And, what was the cause of this split? You guessed it... a disagreement over certain tenets of their core ideology...
The ecclesiastical differences and theological disputes between the Greek East and Latin West pre-dated the formal rupture that occurred in 1054. Prominent among these were the issues of the source of the Holy Spirit, whether leavened or unleavened bread should be used in the Eucharist, the Bishop of Rome's claim to universal jurisdiction, and the place of the See of Constantinople in relation to the Pentarchy.
Wikipedia: East-West Schism.
Rejection of these tenets was finally instigated by a single individual, Humbert of Silva Candida, who boldly excommunicated the Patriarch of Constantinople, leading to the permanent split.
Although other minor sects and faiths split off of the Catholic Church, and its ideology continued to be altered from time to time, another major dissatisfaction would not arise until Martin Luther nailed his 95 Theses on the door of the Wittenberg Church, an act that ushered in the Protestant Reformation.
Now there were three major branches of Christianity: Catholic, Orthodox, and Protestant. Division grew into an accelerating pattern. All three of the major branches developed groups that then separated into even smaller groups.
John Calvin became the symbol of heresy in 1552. Where the break from Catholicism (Lutheranism) was called the Protestant Reform, the break from Lutheranism was named Reformed Protestantism.
Both Protestantism and Catholicism continued to splinter as the political interests of certain nations outweighed loyalty to strict Christian traditions.
What happened in England (during the aptly-called, English Reformation in the 16th and 17th Centuries) is the best example of this. Anglicanism (with its Episcopal doctrine) was a result of reforms to both Calvinism, for English Protestants, and to the former state religion of Catholicism. Although Anglicanism violates my hypothesis of single individuals creating new ideologies, to some degree, inevitably, individuals did catch the concepts of further reform and ran with them.
Protestantism in particular lent itself to unending denominationalism. As we all recall from grade school, one of these denominations, commonly known as Puritans, left England to find religious freedom in America. These folks were dissatisfied with the Protestant reforms, which they believed had not gone far enough, and were dead set against the Church of England (Anglicans), which they deemed to be too much like Catholicism. They saw King Henry VIII's separation from Rome as purely political--which it was. And, they crossed the ocean to set up a new life in America.
America subsequently became the land of prolific religious fragmentation, with Protestant denominations falling apart and reforming into the many churches we see today in this country. Presently, even denominationalism itself is fragmenting into so-called "postdenominational" and "nondenominational" sects. The former, being largely a trend involving evangelical movements, with charismatic ministers, and the latter being any more liberal faith, whether Christian in origin or not...
I think the 21st Century trends for religious groups make this point even more effectively. As we saw one group split into two, then three, then dozens, then hundreds, now we see those groups splinter into the most basic components of all--right back into the individual people. The farthest possible division of any group is simply the inDIVIDual.
It is a fact that churches are hemorrhaging members. The younger generations are leaving the churches in greater numbers than ever before. This does not mean that spirituality is fading in society. Rather, it is an indication that individuals want to develop their own belief systems, separate from cults of personality, priests, ministers, and other intercessors.
Groups who seek to hold onto members by restricting their individual interpretations of group ideology end up losing those members. Ultimately, individualism always ends up winning.
Because of this I believe that in the future personal religion will be the rule. Social religion will be seen in a completely different way than it is now. When ALL individuals are allowed to form their own worldviews, while agreeing to the someday-obvious and common belief that each person should be free from being proselytized at by others, while simultaneously accepting that it is unwise to proselytize to others, the ultimate social religion will have been created. The Personal Religion of Humanity.
And, as I have indicated, religion is just one aspect of society where ideology limits individual freedom. As the rule of group ideology breaking back into individual belief can hold sway in religion, so shall it do so in politics and all other social systems. As long no one in the highest offices of power decides to end the world.
The need to use group-based ideology as a crutch for not thinking for one's self must be replaced with personal philosophical responsibility. When that occurs ideology will cease to be a significant factor in society.
Will this ever really happen? It certainly seems unlikely in the current climate of unthinking adherence that we see today, and in the polarized political climate of today's America.
Yet, the trend for polarization between right and left can only push society so far. Eventually, such social extremism must bend and then break the current order.
In the past this kind of situation is a characteristic of pre-revolutionary change; usually in the form of violence. America tends toward the use of violence as a means to solve its social problems anyway. However, even for the most hard-headed among us, logic must assert itself to some degree. One ideological side of the political spectrum can never hope to rule or "win" over the other side while also expecting that peace will result. At this point in history that would be impossible.
In my opinion, and for all the reasons listed above, we as individuals separately not only should have the power to decide the philosophical future, we WILL.
Now there were three major branches of Christianity: Catholic, Orthodox, and Protestant. Division grew into an accelerating pattern. All three of the major branches developed groups that then separated into even smaller groups.
John Calvin became the symbol of heresy in 1552. Where the break from Catholicism (Lutheranism) was called the Protestant Reform, the break from Lutheranism was named Reformed Protestantism.
Both Protestantism and Catholicism continued to splinter as the political interests of certain nations outweighed loyalty to strict Christian traditions.
What happened in England (during the aptly-called, English Reformation in the 16th and 17th Centuries) is the best example of this. Anglicanism (with its Episcopal doctrine) was a result of reforms to both Calvinism, for English Protestants, and to the former state religion of Catholicism. Although Anglicanism violates my hypothesis of single individuals creating new ideologies, to some degree, inevitably, individuals did catch the concepts of further reform and ran with them.
Protestantism in particular lent itself to unending denominationalism. As we all recall from grade school, one of these denominations, commonly known as Puritans, left England to find religious freedom in America. These folks were dissatisfied with the Protestant reforms, which they believed had not gone far enough, and were dead set against the Church of England (Anglicans), which they deemed to be too much like Catholicism. They saw King Henry VIII's separation from Rome as purely political--which it was. And, they crossed the ocean to set up a new life in America.
America subsequently became the land of prolific religious fragmentation, with Protestant denominations falling apart and reforming into the many churches we see today in this country. Presently, even denominationalism itself is fragmenting into so-called "postdenominational" and "nondenominational" sects. The former, being largely a trend involving evangelical movements, with charismatic ministers, and the latter being any more liberal faith, whether Christian in origin or not...
The term has been used in the context of various faiths including Jainism, Baha'i Faith, Zoroastrianism, Unitarian Universalism, paganism, Christianity, Islam, Judaism, Hinduism, Buddhism and Wicca. It stands in contrast with a religious denomination. Religionists of a non-denominational persuasion tend to be more open-minded in the views on various religious matters and rulings. Some converts towards non-denominational strains of thought have been influenced by disputes over traditional teachings in the previous institutions they attended. Nondenominationalism has also been used as a tool for introducing neutrality into a public square when the local populace are derived from a wide-ranging set of religious beliefs.
Wikipedia - Non-denominationalMy study above about how major religious groups with ideological cores splinter into smaller and smaller groups, based on ideology, is far from complete. Yet, I think it does make a point about seeing the ideological forest for the trees. By that, I mean that ideology proves itself to be an ineffective way to change the world. When leaders of churches (in this case, for social religions--though it could be any other interest, such as political or scientific groups) rely upon requiring members to hold rigid central ideological group beliefs, they set themselves up for inevitable failure.
A Solution for the Future?
I think the 21st Century trends for religious groups make this point even more effectively. As we saw one group split into two, then three, then dozens, then hundreds, now we see those groups splinter into the most basic components of all--right back into the individual people. The farthest possible division of any group is simply the inDIVIDual.
It is a fact that churches are hemorrhaging members. The younger generations are leaving the churches in greater numbers than ever before. This does not mean that spirituality is fading in society. Rather, it is an indication that individuals want to develop their own belief systems, separate from cults of personality, priests, ministers, and other intercessors.
Groups who seek to hold onto members by restricting their individual interpretations of group ideology end up losing those members. Ultimately, individualism always ends up winning.
Because of this I believe that in the future personal religion will be the rule. Social religion will be seen in a completely different way than it is now. When ALL individuals are allowed to form their own worldviews, while agreeing to the someday-obvious and common belief that each person should be free from being proselytized at by others, while simultaneously accepting that it is unwise to proselytize to others, the ultimate social religion will have been created. The Personal Religion of Humanity.
And, as I have indicated, religion is just one aspect of society where ideology limits individual freedom. As the rule of group ideology breaking back into individual belief can hold sway in religion, so shall it do so in politics and all other social systems. As long no one in the highest offices of power decides to end the world.
The need to use group-based ideology as a crutch for not thinking for one's self must be replaced with personal philosophical responsibility. When that occurs ideology will cease to be a significant factor in society.
Will this ever really happen? It certainly seems unlikely in the current climate of unthinking adherence that we see today, and in the polarized political climate of today's America.
Yet, the trend for polarization between right and left can only push society so far. Eventually, such social extremism must bend and then break the current order.
In the past this kind of situation is a characteristic of pre-revolutionary change; usually in the form of violence. America tends toward the use of violence as a means to solve its social problems anyway. However, even for the most hard-headed among us, logic must assert itself to some degree. One ideological side of the political spectrum can never hope to rule or "win" over the other side while also expecting that peace will result. At this point in history that would be impossible.
In my opinion, and for all the reasons listed above, we as individuals separately not only should have the power to decide the philosophical future, we WILL.
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