think of the world today…
we have ism’s and ideologies up the wahoo… and then think about
history… the history of human beings is the history of the conflicts
between ism’s/ideologies……. for example, the Holocaust, that is
an ism brought into form and the result, the death of millions…
in fact, take any event we can think of historically, take the Peloponnesian
War… that was a war of ideology, the Athenian ism’s versus the Spartan
ism…take the on going conflict between Christian’s and Muslims that
has gone on for over a thousand years… two ism’s attacking and destroying
each other over what? different views of heaven? a differently name god?
if you think about it, it is tragedy of immense proportions… two religion
trying to end each other because they call their god a different name,
one is Allah and the other Yahweh… and for that people have died…
and each calling themselves the “One true religion”…
Think of the cultural wars of the last 40 years here in America…
that is nothing more then two ism’s fighting over values…a whole
lot of vitriol because two viewpoints can’t agree with each other…
and think of the wars that have killed millions over the years and fought
because of ism’s and ideology…… every war is a war of ism/ideology…
my beliefs are better then your beliefs and I am willing to fight you over
my “superior” beliefs…… what a sad excuse to kill another human being…
you might say, ism’s are the way we know the rules of the game and the
map we need to guide us into the future…
I say, ism’s have caused the deaths of millions and have caused untold amount
of suffering and damaged in the lives of countless human beings……
are we both right? No, for we can find out the rules of life without resorting
to ism’s/ideologies and we can discover our path through life without ism’s/ideologies…
but to do so, we have to actually think and study and understand what
life is and what is our purpose……… using an ism or ideology or prejudice or
myths or superstitions to understand life is an very lazy way to understand life…
using someone’s else cheat sheet as it were instead of finding it out yourself…
perhaps a familiar saying might give us a hand here…Sepere aude…
Dare to know… or dare to think for yourself…….
don’t rely on age old ism’s and ideologies as a base line to guide your life…
dare to think about your life as your life and use your values, your goals,
your vision…to find the path or journey you need to take, to become you…
to become who you are………
to engage in ism’s and ideologies is to engage with ism’s that have
been around for thousands of years… Christian values have been around
for 2000 years… that doesn’t mean that we should continue to engage with
Christian values just because they have been around a long time…
we should engage with the values that come about from our own
engagement with a reevaluation of values…if people would
actually engaged with a reevaluation of values, the “time-honored” values
that we know today, wouldn’t be here… they would have been long dead
and buried… because they don’t have the ability to adapt and change with
modernity… the question of modernity has completely changed what values
mean something and what values are worthless………values that worked in
the middle ages cannot work in our ever shifting engagement with the modern
values created by the circumstances of modernity, the result of the industrial
revolution and our alienation from society and each other and from ourselves…
and the nihilism that fill our lives so completely that we can’t even tell
just how nihilistic we have become because of ism’s/ideologies of capitalism
and communism and the false promises that are political, economic, social
and scientific… promises that are false because they offer us ism’s and ideologies
that cannot deliver their vaunted promises of reaching our ideals… and why can’t
they deliver their promises? Because our ism’s and ideologies are tainted
by the inherent nihilism that exists within each and every ism and ideology…
to free ourselves from today’s ism and ideology is to be free of the nihilism
that exists within capitalism and the nihilism that exists within communism
and the nihilism that exists within Catholicism and the nihilism that exists
within any religion… it is the nihilism within every ism and ideology
today that corrupts and taints our modern ism’s and ideologies……
Kropotkin