Opus 2022-200: Ideologues Are Ubiquitous

I continued listening to Jordan Peterson and Rod Dreher discussing Live Not by Lies.  I heard it in sound bites that went until they continued the discussion behind a “pay wall.”  Pay walls and advertising I can’t skip are usually a notice to me that I have other things to do in my life.  I respect their right to be entrepreneurs and exercise my right to not listen.  

One reason I listen to discussions between people like this is the tangents they produce in my mind.  One of those tangents came up when they began to discuss the belief systems that guide people.  I believe it was Peterson who asked Dreher, “What is the difference between ideology and religion?”  I wasn’t satisfied with his answer.  I think he was trying to be reasonable instead of being called something rude like, ideologue.  So I asked myself the same question.

First, there is nothing wrong with the word ideology.  It becomes a problem because the Progressives* want to attack people who have strong beliefs.  It is another one of those perfectly useful bits of vocabulary that the left has highjacked and loaded with their content.  It is simply a system of ideas.  Anyone who thinks coherently has an ideology.  The word breaks down into the roots meaning ideas and study.  Just as biology is the study of life so ideology is the study of ideas.  We really need to rise up when we hear this kind of cultural abuse by the deconstructionist Progressives*.

Ideology can be based on religion.  This is true whether the religion is Communism or Christianity.  I am in the process of reading 1984.  In it the basics ideas of Communism, or The Party, are presented.  Among them is the idea that truth is whatever the party says it is today.  

“In the end the Party would announce that two and two made five, and you would have to believe it. It was inevitable that they should make that claim sooner or later: the logic of their position demanded it. Not merely the validity of experience, but the very existence of external reality, was tacitly denied by their philosophy.” (Kindle Location 1065-1070)

For the party the ultimate truth was a sliding scale of convenience.  In the same way your local church has traditionally had a Statement of Faith that gave the basics it believed in.  So I would say that all ideology has a religious belief at its root.

Religion is based on what are accepted as unchanging, eternal truths.  Christianity is based on the Bible and its teachings.  Islam is based on the Koran.  Communism goes to the Manifesto.  It is not something to be ashamed of or deny.  It is simply a fact.

So just as there is no real shame in being white, patriotic or a home owner, neither is there any real shame in being ideological.  If you feel shame then shame on you.

homo unius libri