💾 Archived View for tilde.pink › ~imbrica › en › txt › ideology.gmi captured on 2022-03-01 at 15:44:03. Gemini links have been rewritten to link to archived content
⬅️ Previous capture (2021-12-03)
-=-=-=-=-=-=-
The movement of ideology is from this belief to that.
It seeks to replace one belief with another.
Once you become disilusioned with one, you don't turn to the space between. Instead of inquiring about that leap, from the filling of that gap with another belief, you just cling to a new explanation.
That's the movement of ideology.
To investigate that movement is called "critical thinking".
When you engage in critical thinking though, you don't move "out" of ideology.
There's no fully moving out of it.
It's in our language, in our values, in the morality we repeat, in the judgements we make. We depend on ideology because if you were completely neutral of it you would act according to what?
If you reply "to my own values", well, those are informed by ideology. Ideology is precisely this invisible, inherited, unchecked set of beliefs we just "have" and can't quite put our finger on.
Some of them we hold dear, some we wish we could get rid of. But it's not all in our full control because some of it is what we will hold against each other as basic "truth" or "fairness".
All these values that are considered arguable and enforceable, they are ideology. They are not anyone's personal judgement. They are not "natural truth" or a logic inscribed in nature either.
It's a human thing.
Cats don't elect cat priests to sanction their beliefs. They just sniff each other's butts and that's it. Just be a cat, do cat stuff.
I'm repeating myself a lot adding warnings to everything I write saying "this is just what I think" and I'm starting to question the principle behind that.
"It may not apply to you."
"Don't apply it to everyone who also deals with some of the issues I'm discussing"
"This is not advice. It's notes to myself that I'm sharing"
"Please criticize me"
All of those should go without saying if we were engaging in critical thinking as a process.
There's no fundamental, universal truth to be explained by anyone.
There are only theories, methods, consensus, points of view.
The idea of an universal truth is the invention of kings and priests and priest-kings.
And by "priest-kings" I mean popes of course.
It's really sad to write anything if it can have that effect of disempowering someone of their ability to think critically.
Some of the stuff I write may sound like a hard affirmation, but it's just thinking, it's just my process of thinking. And some of it comes from a place of journaling, of 'notes to myself'. It's not a self-help book.
You can read it as someone else's experience and that can give you perspective, but no self-help book, no non-fiction book and no religious text will teach you "reality" or "truth".
In fact fiction and poetry are so much deeper and closer to that precisely because they don't even try or pretend to be "real".
So please, as you read, take that into account.
written Fri Apr 2 23:04:33 UTC 2021