Beyond Ideology (but never far enough)
What difference does it make to the dead, the orphans, and the homeless, whether the mad destruction is wrought under the name of totalitarianism or the holy name of liberty and democracy?
~ Gandhi
Ideology is part of the human condition. Its function, however, is not always the same. When it is used in advance, ideology censors the need to intimately know the other thing. It serves as an excuse to consume the other before it is given to me. It distorts and reshapes the other according to my own horizon of possibility. This function of ideology, ideology-in-advance, sanitizes and deodorizes the world with a fragrance I can control and live with. There is no room for death in this world.
No, there are only numbers, objects, lists, casualties and causes to be advanced for the sake of our ideology-in-advance. It quarters and measures the world and the person. Even God. As passionate as we may become and as “pure” as our ideology may seem to be, sending it out to scout the other to prevent contact with real lepers reveals the true face of ideology-in-advance: Fear.
Even an ideology of love, compassion, democracy, Jesus, Mother Theresa, or what have you, used in advance is just language, only name of something we do not know. It is not the thing the language corresponds to. As we partition the world into fragmented bodies of our ideological taxonomies, we sterilize and recast the world in our own image, on our own terms. In such a world we have nothing to truly fight for, we have nothing to truly be, we have no Truth at all. We only have those essential ideas that keep us thinking that this is what life is, safely embedded in the blindness of our own ideological existence.
One can never, and should never, try to escape ideology or Truth. But it should only come after our encounter with the world. And the excessive nature of real, live, and tragic moments, should make the ideas we decide afterward tremble. Also, since our encounter with the world is eternal, our ideology should always be ideology-to-come, never quite decided, yet rooted in Truth. This function reveals the face of ideology-to-come: Love.
The tranformative effect of love in the function of ideology-to-come reminds us of the flesh of matter. The numbers, statistics, good causes, and other things that were once human persons before ideology-in-advance cleansed them, become human once again. They become more than daughters, they become “my daughter.” My self. God. Then, we can embrace the world and live in it. In Truth. In Love. Blind to the ideology-in-advance that remains after we fool ourself and think that we are healed.
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Sam, I like what you’re saying here, and I am very sympathetic, but the question for me remains, how do we go to battle for an “ideology-to-come, never quite decided?” Is this a trumpet call that will rouse the troops?
One should never try to escape ideology?
In what sense are you using the word ideology?
what do you mean by ideology?
Sam,
Welcome to Vox Nova. I look forward to reading your posts and exchanging ideas.
As for Beyond Ideology, my question is simple: what do you mean by ideology?
Where I come from, ideology is always false, no matter its stripe. Coming from a Neo-Thomist background, it is rooted in a false understanding of human reality, a false understanding of God and man’s relationship to God, and a false understanding nature and man’s relationship to nature. It is first and foremost reductionist and as such takes a small slice of reality and builds its entire ediiface upon that piece.
Perhaps you mean something different.
If I am correct ideology may be a belief system that is built to support specific values. These values may be the result of basic feelings of pleasure or pain, safety or threat, survival or death, etc. These basic feelings may originate from 7 basic neuropathways in the limbic system of the brain which may be identified as rage, fear, separation distress, nurturing, lust, fun and drive. The two major pathways that set up the strength of the others are separation distress and drive.
The human brain is highly sensitized to potential threat and how safely a child bonds to the primary caregiver, the mother, will determine whether or not that child has a sense of safety and reward and consequently a sense of value.
Another aspect of human development is the mirror neuron system of the developing brain. Researchers in the middle and late 90′s discovered that the premotor cortex and inferior parietal areas would activate in response to observed action and would also anticipate intention for future behavior expected for particular events.
They also discovered mirror neurons in the posterior parietal love, the superior temporal sulcus and the insula all of which play significant roles in compreehending feelings, intent and language. We are a basic mixture of responses programmed from infancy that give us our sense of self and expectations we face in the social system we are born into.
This is the hardwiring that basically delivers feelings to our conscious awareness and from that point our brain is designed to develop beliefs that are congruent with these primitive feelings.
Until there is an epiphany we have limited choices. Self-awareness is the beginning of freedom. From the existential perspective anyone who is self-aware is going to live in a state of anxiety due to the awareness the crises of death, lack of freedom, isolation and apparent lack of meaning.
There are two general neurotic responses to these crises. One is to seek a savior in human relationships or human institutions that promise protection from the threat of death and suffering.
The second neurotic response is to attempt to be special as a reaction to the awareness of being nothing.
This is a before the discovery that God is real and God is Love.
Agreeing with the other commenters, Sam, I think you need to define what you mean by “ideology”, because for me, that term signifies a reduction of Truth to a limited horizon which man can control, from what is “truly” is — a Person — to a reduced conception of reality which fails to recognize its own limitations.
What a great post and discussion! I am still not clear on the use of ideology. Whenever the human person as relegated as a tool for one, it is always demeaning. Indeed, ideology, ideas, ideals and that harsh experience of reality which includes our psychological drives: all of this collides with the dignity of the human person, his fire for freedom, his noble aspirations, his longing for love and his pursuit of truth. In all this, we long for the music of the spheres but hear a bent world’s cacophony – but for Hopkins’ “dearest freshness of deep down things” and those “ah! bring wings.”
I consider ideology to be related to, if not the same as, our ideas, ideals and, in particular, how those things become “holy names” (like Ganhdi describes in the opening quote). These names seem to take on a life of their own rooted in a mistakenly fixed belief about ideas and beliefs–call it epistemology if you like. This creates a certain criterion or limit we have for the world, at least it seems that way to me. That is why it is inescapable. Ideology points to the nagging incongruence between the temporality of our existence in the world and dynamic nature of the self.
Now, having written that, I don’t really get what the big fuss is about. Afterall, whatever intuitive gleanings the essay may have, it is not intended to define ideology or even address what should be done about whatever ideology is or is not. The point is to put aside the linguistic attachments we have over and over again in order to live more in love. Take this to be a way to think about conversion.
In the end, I find the heart of the matter in Gandhi’s quote. My stuff afterward was just some wrestling.
I will return sooner than later, whatever that means.
A few other things. I hope my reply didn’t come off as coy. I do think you all raise good points, let me be less dismissive and reply to a few of them right quick before I go to bed.
Gerald: What you wrote is puzzling to me, especially considering the experience of sensory perception. Reductionism, in the sense you put it, is the water we swim in empirically-speaking. And therefore, we find the inescapability of ideology as you defined it.
Chris: That is what I mean. But, as I said to Gerald, there are no innocent in this phenomena. Even after we agree to stay away from it, it is a structure of our very function as persons who perceive the world.
David: Your question is too hard to answer without falling into a logical contradiction. Thankfully, contradiction is fairly weak metaphysical principle to begin with and we can set to work in the space in between.
Ronald: I am having a hard time following you. But I do agree that God is Love, which cannot possibly signify what it is we mean–we know not of God or Love.
Sam, it seems to me that we differ on the final point of my cursory definition: that ideology is ideology in part because it fails to recognize its own limitations.
I would agree with the idea that as finite creatures, we are unable to intuitively grasp the nature of reality comprehensively, and therefore that our knowledge of reality can only be limited. But ideology is ideology *not* because of this reality of finite creation, but because it fails to recognize this reality and as a result erroneously conceives of its grasp of reality as comprehensive when it is not.
FWIW.
Sam, we all may be floating a bit in the ether here. Could you give some concrete examples of how you see “ideology” leading us astray? I see the problem in terms of a counterproductive partisanship and political polarization, both in the Church and society at large.
I guess the only cure I see for “ideology” in the bad sense is cleaving as closely as possible to the words of Jesus as we have them in the gospels–words that are often not so easy to interpret, i.e., to readily translate into a definite thought system neatly arranging “God, the universe and everything.” And then on the other end, so to speak, in terms of judging ideologies: “You will know them by their fruits.”
Sam,
Your definition suggests to me that it is more or less impossible to know something to be true. Is this what you mean to say, or do I read you incorrectly? Also, you write:
“contradiction is fairly weak metaphysical principle”
Can I quote you on that?
Sam, I too have a hard time following myself at times. What I was trying to get at is how the instinctive needs for safety and belonging can influence the emotional development of the human being that then influences the development of core beliefs about oneself, others and the world.
These core beliefs are then associated to every interaction we have in life. Until we are aware of these beliefs and the powerful emotions that sustain them we are subject to their influence and our identity is then created from this foundation.
The vulnerable self is then protected by a system of defense mechanisms that each human being unconsciously uses to relate to other human beings. In other words we relate through a false personality constructed for the protection of our vulnerable self. Until self-awareness takes place we will unconsciously seek others of like mind and perceive ourselves as being free when we are not.
We will seek belief systems that resonate with ours and thus we have the different ideologies that present the self with meeting some unconscious need to belong and feel as though we have meaning and purpose.
I must go now. Thanks for your patience with my rambling.
Sam,
I not certain how to respond, perhaps because I’m not certain what you are saying.
But, agreeing with Zach, it appears you are denying a place for the transcendent or, more specifically, universals. Are you denying access to an objective intellectual order? If so, why would you treat love differently than any other empirical phenomena? On what grounds is it special?
” Ideology points to the nagging incongruence between the temporality of our existence in the world and dynamic nature of the self.”
Are we time bound? Are you saying that history is merely a contest of ideologies?
The principle of contradiction is a fairly weak metaphysical principle? Are you sure? What would the world be like without it? Would everything be “loose and unconnected” like Hume says. Is reality just matter in motion and what individuals would make of it?
Would music be merely dissonance? Would politics be nothing other than a struggle of all against all? Would there be such a thing as reconciliation?
I guess I fail to understand.
Here’s round two.
Chris: You wrote, “But ideology is ideology *not* because of this reality of finite creation, but because it fails to recognize this reality and as a result erroneously conceives of its grasp of reality as comprehensive when it is not.”
I think we would agree if it were possible to be finite but, at the same time, perceive (recognize the world) beyond and in spite of our own finitude. Perception, language, and more, all are cases that torment us with ideology and we cannot escape it, or exist outside of it. This creates that restlessness in our nature that Augustine wrote of, I think.
David: Yes. Those are the same things I am thinking about. Thanks for reminding me, I needed that. Now, on to metaphysics!
Zach: Don’t quote me, I didn’t think of it on my own. If you want a rigorous defense of that statement look to Alexius Meinong and Bertrand Russell’s exchanges following Meinong’s “Theory of Objects”. Here, the problem of negative existentials really takes contradiction for a loop.
It also happens that Jean-Luc Marion credits this very moment (around 1900), when being was put to question via the weakness of contradiction, as the genesis of the phenomenological concept of giveness and the beginning of the project (made famous by Heidegger) of the rigorous questioning of being.
Anyone who takes metaphysics seriously must come to terms with this situation, as I see it. But if you really want to get radical, then, size this idea up: Being is a fairly weak metaphysical principle, in terms of ontological firstness.
Ronald: I see what you mean and we disagree because of your reliance on developmental notions of the self and what follows from such ideas in psychology. This is an odd thing since one of my competencies is William James, but, still, I am uneasy about the whole thing. Nonetheless, I do grasp your argument. Thanks for reading my ramblings too.
Gerald (and Zach): Ontologically speaking, I am a foundationalist, a realist, and the whole shebang. It just gets really tricky when we begin to formulate the ontological as human persons using perception, language, knowledge, feeling, and so on.
Objective intellectual order works out for me at an ontological level, but cashing it out in the world is very hard for me, i.e. stuff always seems to complicate it or get in the way. And, furthermore, the idea of intellectual objectivity assumes an intellect able of grasping objectivity in all its excessive force. This is impossible as I see it. Truth is an excessive phenomena that saturates our consciousness and leaves us running over unable to contain it.
As for love, well that l-o-v-e word-thing is not what it is. Not for a second. But its all I have here, so I play pretend, which is all language is to me really. One big game of “let’s call this that and pretend that’s what it is.”
Contradiction is a strong principle of Newtonian physics and most of material reality, but I am not a Newtonian nor a materialist when it comes to ontology. So you can keep spoons and forks from bi-locating and music gets to keep its intervals, but that certainly doesn’t monopolize metaphysics, as I see it.
Another thought about ideology, “I think therefore I am.” From Krishnamurti, “When there is no division between the observer and the observed there you will discover truth.”
He states that all belief is from the past and it is what separates us from one another. To call oneself Christian, Hindu, Capitalist, Socialist, democrat, republican, etc., is to create conflict. When one identifies with an ideology that immediately creates division and conflict.
Transcendence begins to occur when oneself begins to see that conflict in the world begins with conflict within self and is projected to the other with different beliefs.
To know love Krishnamurti states we must first know what is not love.
Sam,
Thanks for the response. I’m sure there will be interesting and fruitful discussions ahead.
Sam thanks for the detailed response.
It all sounds very postmodern to me, and I suppose I reject many of the limitations postmodernism places on epistemology. You write, “Truth is an excessive phenomena that saturates our consciousness and leaves us running over unable to contain it. ” I do not think all truth is as such. It is certainly the case with a truth like the dogma of the Trinity, but is certainly not the case with a truth such as 4+5 = 9. I also think it would be near impossible to say anything meaningful if the law of non-contradiction is “weak, metaphsyically”. But I’ll try to find the argument you mention.
Gerald: I sure hope so, thanks.
Zach: “Postmodern” is a term I abhor. You may want to read what I wrote about the ‘post’ a few entries earlier to see that I really am a foundationalist.
Also, Meinong and Russell were hardly postmodern, they were analytic philosophers. In analytic philosophy the problem of negative existentials (e.g. In the true proposition “The present king of France does not exist.” the present King of France exists as a the subject of a true proposition!) is real and prickly to get around.
Furthermore, I reject the idea that there are “truths,” some of which are easy to deal and others which are harder or impossible. Truth is a total category that gives itself in particulars that, if they are true (like 4+5=9), then, we cannot fully grasp their Truth.
Now this is not postmodern (whatever that means). Take the meaning of the mathematical equation you cite and push it to its breaking point in mathematics and you will find that indeed it too is an excessive phenomenon. Explanatory things like gravity, laws of motion, simple equations, only tell us so much. They too, like the source of all Truth, are excessive in their deepest sense of veracity, I think.
So, please do not pass me off as yet-another-postmodern. Really, as I like to see it, I am a phenomenologist. As such I agree that we can say meaningful things like, “I have ten toes,” “round-circles do not exist or subsist in any relevant way,” and so on, but the meaning of the truth of the matter is never given in its fullness. We are left with too little. That is what keeps us restless be it for holiness, love, scientific explanation, mathematical understand, aesthetic appreciation, or what have you.
One more thing. Whatever limits I put on epistemology are the same ones used by scientific fallibility, mathematical proofs, and the rest. They can never project a totalizing truth forward in time, the can only go on with faith that probabilities will hold up as they have. I don’t like this vulgarized way of putting it, but the parallels are clear, I think.
Here is the link: http://vox-nova.com/2009/04/16/the-post-love-tragedy/
Two things. First, I will most certainly not “write you off”, for any reason. Second, I will be blunt. What is it about 4+5 = 9 that you do not understand?
Zach,
In base 6, “9″ means nothing. So even 4+5=9 has all kinds of pressupositions involved with it, including the base you are using. It also assumes considerable amount of things about the nature of numbers in general, questions which have yet to be answered, starting with, what are “zero,” “one,” and even “two”? Are they even numbers?
Zach: Sorry if I was testy. I just get upset when people call me a postmodern, mostly because what they mean is I am not important. You clearly are not doing that, so, thanks.
Thank you for such a straightforward question. I will try to give you a straightforward answer: Where do I begin?
I mean, of course I understand the material consequences of the concept. When I see four spoons in one piece of dining room time-space and five across from the four, I know that there are nine of them to be put in the dishwasher. But the temporal or material availability of the equation is not what makes it True. That only makes it empirically available to me in experience, which I extend through intuition to believe that, unless it is falsified through another experience, it is true.
But the equation itself is still deeply mysterious to me.
To begin with, I do not grasp the full mathematical meaning of integers and their function to the fullest extent possible, since that puts them up against harder things to notate like really big numbers, square roots, infinity, and so on.
Also, what “really” makes it true is a piece of technical mathematics that I do know how to prove. Do you know the proof for 1+1=2? Even if we both did, then, we would have to claim complete possession of every concept in that proof.
Then, there is the order of things. I mean where does the Truth of the order of mathematics comes from? That pushes me into theological and mystical directions where we find Truth, and are humbled by its excess.
That “excess of truth” is not something we assign to the really hard stuff to figure out, because everything true is really hard to figure out if we are serious about it. The very idea of numerical order is deeply mysterious thing to ponder.
And, none of that means that, empirically speaking, I have to deny that I am sitting in ONE chair right now with MORE THAN ONE book in the bookshelf next to me. But, I can only say that acknowledging that if I were to want to know the Truth of the matter, then, I would soon find myself on my knees in prayer, in awe of the excessive mystery of Truth.
So, “What is it about 4+5 = 9 that you do not understand?”
Everything about its nature, origin, meaning, and value. To put it another way, I do not, indeed cannot, understand Truth. The gift that I cherish is that I can experience Truth and believe in it without the requirement of being God to know it fully.
Yes, I assumed a base 10 system, because that’s what most people are familiar with. The concept of a number, however, is not beyond most people’s comprehension. It refers to the quantity of a thing. Most people can understand the category thing and understand the description quantity. I know what it means, and sure, I might not be able to appreciate its value, or true nature, or origin. But it’s meaning, it’s significance, it’s truth, I can grasp, and this is the most significant part of it’s being. I am not trying to be reductionist, only realist. Reality is certainly mysterious, even something as seemingly simple as 4+5 = 9. I find myself nodding my head in agreement when you write, “where does the Truth of the order of mathematics comes from? That pushes me into theological and mystical directions where we find Truth, and are humbled by its excess. ” But I think this does not preclude us from admitting that some things we can indeed understand, if not completely, more fully than other things.
I suppose what I am defending is a hierarchy in truth. Some truths are easier to comprehend than others. I do not think this is a controversial point for those not steeped in a culture that is intellectually obsessed with egalitarianism.
But maybe I’m wrong.
Your point is well taken. But, I do not think that such a hierarchy can possibly account for truth at the level of logos, Christ: unanalyzed totality. If there is Truth in something it cannot be something entirely different than Truth itself, I think.