In many cases a dogma or a religious or political ideal is defended against its historical effects, by evoking some idealized idea of it.
When what we despise we find fault in, using its real historical and empirical manifestations, we use a different standard to judge our own preferred beliefs.
On the one hand we can attack Fascism or Communism on its historical basis, and then defend Christianity on an idealistic one, conveniently avoiding the historical data contradicting the ideal itself.
In Buddhism, no less, an ideal Buddhist or a “purity” is presented when the reality of Buddhism does not measure up to the ideal.
In this way a double standard is often used, by the average mind, to judge ideas, at once demanding empirical proof when it is challenged and then denouncing it as irrelevant when it confronts a desirable outcome.
On those grounds every idea devised by man is good in its pure, authenticity, and only fails when applied in a reality that is indifferent to human motives and desires.
But I am no Platonist.
For me every idea is flawed, based on the fact that the mind that produces it is flawed, and the only way to judge an idea or ideal is by how it applies in real time and within the real world, and not by how it should apply or could apply or must apply, if the “appropriate” conditions are present.
For me, everything can only be judged by its actuality, not its hypothetical authenticity and the, supposed, purity of its motives.
I agree and adhere to your logic here; this description sounds very empirical to me. Are you an Aristotelean then? I believe I-myself am an Empiricist.
Ideas are very, very flawed in terms of reality-to-actuality. They must be in order for the brain to learn. If ideas were perfect from the beginning, then learning would be impossible. Perhaps that is why everything Socrates knew was wrong. Ideas were made to be wrong, in a way. They must be constantly-tested, and allowed to fail or succeed.
It is difficult to say. It depends on what I want.
If a wolf wants to eat, then its ‘ideal’ is to catch some prey. For a rabbit, its ‘ideal’ is survival and thus flees from the hunting wolf. These two ‘ideals’ appear very contradictory to one-another. Neither the wolf nor the rabbit are going to accept the other ideal, for obvious reasons. This opposition is detrimental to the health of either participant (the wolf starving or the rabbit dying). Then again, once the wolf becomes domesticated into a dog, for example, then its ‘ideal’ changes and can thus subscribe to the rabbit’s ‘ideal’ whereas it was once impossible. I believe ideals will clash until there is a common purpose and no (apparent) reason for one subject to harm another.
It just so happens that religion is the conduit for such a belief-system.
I think by starting the conversation with the word ‘flawed’ there is already a problem. “Incomplete” would probably be a better word, right? After all, the concept of ‘flawed’ demands a dualistic understanding, a comparison to something ‘not flawed.’ That is a big part of what the taijitu represents. Within that incompleteness, we also need to look at which areas we are emphasizing. It is on my mind because I’m currently involved in a discussion that touches on it, but look at the role of women in Buddhism. It is incredibly, absurdly progressive compared to the Hindu system that it sought to supplant at the time. So that is good. At the same time, its views aren’t terribly progressive compared to, say, America in the 21st century. Thankfully, modern views can be read into Buddhism with ease and those anachronistic bits can be updated without difficulty. I think the American government is the same way, it is an incredible piece of Enlightenment engineering, a glorious culmination of many forces at play in the 18th century. However, knowledge and systems have progressed, and the system’s great age is showing. Communism is another example, it did a fantastic job for most people living in their countries, compared to both the previous order as well as some of the capitalist reforms those orders had attempted. Communism is great at building infrastructure. But there is also a huge price-tag attached to that success, of which we are all aware.
So whose history are we examining, and what elements are we seeking to emphasize? It can get pretty murky.
Christianity, for example, is rarely practiced. Hell, Christians can’t even agree on what it means to be Christian, so how can we possibly look to historical examples of so-called Christians to ascertain the truth of Christianity?
I do agree, however, that only real life application is sufficient for demonstrating its truth. I just think we need to be real careful before saying something like “history contradicts its teaching”. Before we do so we need to be sure we’re looking at Christians.
In order to know we’re looking at Christians our only recourse is to the ideal. We must hold the contenders up to the literature in order to confirm their Christianity. Once confirmed - as much as confirmation is possible - then we can see if real life application contradicts Christian teaching.
But perhaps you think anyone who claims to be Christian is Christian. Or perhaps you have some actual historical evidence to show the contradiction(s)?
Your emotional reactions to words is not the issue.
All value judgments are comparisons.
Flawed in the sense that it demands upkeep, and so is a process of self-correction that inevitably fails.
Dualism is the basis of distinguishing everything, including self. A method of thinking, the mind evolved to use to survive.
ALL concepts are flawed and only exist as perfect or pure, even your Buddhism, in the mnids of men whom only have a partial and murky understanding of them and where nothing is ever defined compeltely.
What you describe as progressive can also be described as conformist, or an adaptation of older conceptions to new cultural conditions.
This does not constitute anything more than a political practice, not a mystical or transcendental one.
The ideal of the Brahman or of Buddha, is such an ideal with no reference to anything real, but a reference to a historical figure, an infamous, hypothetical, manifestation of the “authentic”, just as the saint is within the Christian faith.
The true spirit of an idea is in its presence, not its selective hypothetical past or imagined future, just as the presence of the self is the essence of it, not some mystical soul or some future, hoped for completion or assimilation within a better Self.
The latter represents a nihilistic trend form the active to the static.
I judge its immediacy in comparison to its idealized future.
I have exposed the hypocrisy of the average human mind that defends ideas on the basis that they are “good” or “pure” in theory even thuogh they can never be applied as such.
I think honestly and remain skeptical and constantly observant.
I am motivated by clarity, rather than happiness.
Against its own.
i judge Christianity agaisnt its own texts, and the Christian against his own beliefs.
I find the hypocrisy astounding.
All judgments are comparisons.
My standard is empiricism, not text or some imagined hypothetical.
i do not say the world can be better, or there is a core self we all share in. I say the self is this process, exposing itself constantly, displaying its essence, hiding it many times.
Can we get an example of this from your perspective?
You have a strange sense of comparison in the examples that you provided: for instance, Fascism and Communism is compared against Christianity.
Instead of listing another form of government, you listed a religion.
Also, you describe a condition where, for something to be historically accurate, the report must come from a perspective that despises it.
I would easily say that the extremes of either side of anything related to opinion are typically wrong.
Either they like it far too much, or they hate it far too much.
I would be wary of any fact from someone that despises the subject at hand even more than someone that loves the subject at hand.
Hate, more often than idealism, warps the facts strongly.
Perhaps it’s just me, but I don’t seem to come into contact with this very often.
Fact is a fact is a fact.
Facts may not change opinion of like or dislike, but they are still valid facts that are the reality as we have it.
I can find out the fact is that icecream increases the risk of cancer by .05%, but that won’t change my like or dislike of the taste of icecream.
Two things:
First, “in a reality”; does this mean this is how you see our reality, or are you suggesting in the realm of multiple realities possible, if one places an idea into a reality such as the following, then the result will be, etc…?
Second, are you simply trying to describe apathy? “Indifferent to human motives and desires”, sounds much like apathy; are you trying to say that an idea fails when it runs into apathy?
Communism - The romantic socialist avoids the discomfort of having to explain the application of communism by evoking some idealized state that has never been and probably never will be, given human nature. The similarities between communism and Christianity are obvious, and so the antagonism between these two ideologies is understandable.
Capitalism - The capitalist, also using Democratic ideals to justify his instinctive drives of greed, envy, gluttony, selfishness, in reference to the contradictory moralistic ideals that accompany western systems - Christianity, Humanism and Capitalism make strange bedfellows - explains away the systemic collapse this unfettering of instinct results in - reflecting natural processes to which human ideals attempt to place a stop to - and evokes the idealized perfect free-market economy, where CEO’s, somehow, are both greedy and selfless, are both compassionate and cut-throat.
A balance dictated by the prevailing cultural norms.
Currently the lies and the frailties of the hypothetical free-market economy are covered up by blaming the individuals, participating in it, for the system’s failure to remain stable and progressive, as the theoretical models claim that it should.
Christianity - The modern day apologists avoids the uncomfortable real-world application of Christian dogma, contradicting the original intent of the ideal itself. He excuses himself from the historical ramification of this power-hungry, nihilistic application, or the lechery of its highest representatives (priests) and evokes some idealized concept of scripture that only fails to be applied by imperfect beings, whereas it was written perfectly by human beings possessed by divinity.
Only the dead are drafted into service, by eliminating their humanity and making them into saints. The perfect historical representations of the dogma’s ideal.
In this case, particularly, the hypocrisy is blatant, as all the consequences of repressed instincts and enforced behaviors constantly fail to meet the dogmas ideals, because the dogma is purposefully constructed to produce confusion and failure and so the feeling of shame or sin and guilt, thusly ensuring a contrite, self-abasing, humility seeking redemption from earthly sources pretending to be representations of the holy or the perfect.
We could say that the dogma is threatened by human nature and so it must shame it into submission and denounce it as evil.
Humanism - One more self-annihilating ideology which makes of Man into a sacred concept, so as to protect it from its “imperfect” manifestations of individuality.
Man made into an abstraction, which then assimilates all particular manifestations of it, within an ideal all must live up to and remain disciplined towards.
The ideal, of course, changing in accordance with cultural changes.
In this case the “selfless”, ego-less, man is epitomized as the communally desirable and then called “authentic” and “free” in contradiction to what the term “free” means, and “unique”, in contradiction to its own premises that seeks a uniform behavior and the elimination of all sense of distinction.
The ideal man, the citizen, is only identified as the one that sacrifices self for Self, as an identity derived through association and belonging with others.
Buddhism - Here, as in Christianity and most popular modern religious faiths, scripture remains ambiguous enough to maintain a malleable, to human reinterpretations, ideology.
Changing cultural necessities makes ambiguity a tool of adaptation where feminism, for example, can be worked into the dogma after it becomes a social force to be reckoned with.
In Christianity this also serves the need to adapt Scripture, written thousands of years ago by ignorant men, to increasing human understanding of the universe.
Buddhism is another nihilistic ideology rooted in socioeconomic and demographic and historical necessities, often pretending to be life-affirming and “positive”…also called “enlightening”.
A politically necessary force of mass control, pretending it is some ascent in consciousness.
In this case the self and the world are denounced as unwanted fabrications that can only produce suffering, and then an ideal state of Brahmani peace and meditative quietude is presented in the face of the Buddha, whom remains beyond criticism or judgment being that he only lives in infamy and his true nature is lost in centuries of compounded mythology, tradition and idolatry.
The ideal is bound to fail, because the very essence of the imagined concept of selflessness is based on the expression of self seeking completion within an impossible, out of reach, ideal.
Impossible because it represents an state nowhere to be found, except as an ideal to be striven towards, and that if, reached, it would entail the end of self…or of the rebirth of self as a manifestation of the rejection of the unity, creating multiplicity.
Here too, the historical failure to practically apply this other-worldly, mystical state, is excused away by evoking the idea that it has been men that have failed, not the dogma itself.
This, of course, as with the other cases, implies a separation of the present, the apparent, from the ideal, the desirable, the absolute possible…as an end to all possibilities.
One, the perceptible, is labeled imperfect, illusion, unreal, etc. while the ambiguous ideal is labeled the “real” the “perfect” the “whole” the “one” the “enlightened”.
Then it is made into a positive, to which all opposition stands as a negative…a negation.
But in this case the negation is of a negation. The reaffirmation of consciousness, where consciousness is the negation of what is.
What is stranger still, is that you cannot comprehend the connection between all ideologies, whether you call them political or religious or spiritual.
For me the ideal in all its forms represents a goal that is usually beyond reality.
The human mind projecting its dissatisfaction with the real by imagining something other than, better, above etc.
In all applications of the ideal failure ensues as all life is guided towards the ideal by the actual, by the historical and biological past, which is, according to the dogmas pursued, imperfect, unjust, undesirable, unreal, illusions.
How is that?
The modern perspective that all must be positive or hopeful is another one of those self-gratifying delusions that imposes a selective interpretation of reality.
When faced with such selective ubiquitous delusion one can only try to return the mind to balance by focusing on what the collective mind considers negative, to attain a more complete perspective.
And how does this relate to the topic?
If your motive is to imply that my views are hateful, then you must prove that this is not your reaction to what is being said, rather than what actually motivates me.
Objectivity demands an indifference towards the subject that may come across as negative or positive when confronting a selective interpretation of reality.
If I confront someone that claims that life is bad, I will come across as positive.
If I confront someone that claims life is good, I will come across as negative.
To you.
In both these cases I will be considered negative, or the negation, of the one being confronted.
If my positions challenge the estalbished myths and your sense of well-being and certainty, then the hate should be sought within yourself, in reaction to what is being said.
This method of insinuating motive is typical.
Then you haven’t been reading anything on this forum.
And how would you define “fact”, since you take it all as self-evident?
For a Christian God is a fact, is a fact, is a fact.
And why do you think that is?
Could it be that despite enhanced awareness, which this new knowledge is, you still cannot overcome your preexisting inclinations, which have evolved within more austere environments?
I’m saying that I’ve often come across people defending the actions of their own kind or of their preferred ideology by claiming that the ideology cannot be judged by its application or the members that follow it.
This goes back to the idea that a person cannot be judged on appearances.
A very interesting idea…Then how can an ideal be judged? Upon its hypothetical perfection or its theoretical “goodness”?
Using this avoidance technique all ideas, including those most of you consider vile, can be defended.
For instance: Nazism cannot be judged by how it was applied in Germany.
Communism cannot be judged by how it was applied in the Soviet Union.
Christianity cannot be judged by how it was applied in the Vatican, by the historical atrocities that were conducted in its name by its followers…the ideal remains untouched by the real.
It has placed itself beyond reproach, in the mystical perfection of the Platonic Idea, where reason and human judgment must be kept away for fear that they may soil their “perfection”.
Then, the member of a cult should not be a reflection of that cult’s essence, just as a cell should not be a reflection of the body’s nature.
Once more the senses, empiricism, is relegated into a secondary role of justifying what already has been estalbished as ideal, and so beyond sensual awareness.
Indifference, as an absolute, is impossible.
So, we are only dealing with degrees of it.
Another word for indifference is independence.
Life is characterized by caring. The first and primary care, from which all others come, is caring for self - self-maintenance.
In that quoted piece, I am implying that the only way TO judge an ideal is by observing and judging those that ascribe to its premises, by the immediate manifestations of this dogma…just as any phenomenon can only be judged by its appearance, because its immediacy carries with it the totality of its past - its essence.
We can only judge a group by judging its members, because its members are what constitute its nature.
To evoke some underlying thing, ideal, source, spirit, soul, is to project anxiety upon what remains indifferent to our desires and to express a deep resentment towards the world as it presents itself to us constantly.
Well, that all depends. In this case, I think you’re opting to use an inferior word.
No argument. That was, in fact, my point.
??? ‘Fails’, compared to what? This is the sort of contradiction that a lot of vague nihilists make, and why nihilism is such a foolish idea. Positing the non-existence of a perfect system and then comparing all systems to a perfect system, thereby demanding that they be ‘flawed/failed’ results in meaningless drivel since the statement is itself a contradiction.
Yes, but that doesn’t have anything to say about the truth value of these statements. Especially since the dualisms we create are a matter of convenience. That doesn’t mean they aren’t important, but one needs to have a proper understanding of how they are important.
Here is that contradiction again. As well as an unfounded assumption, I’m not a Buddhist after all. Or, rather, Buddhism isn’t my emphasis.
Where did I argue it was a mystical of transcendental one? It is just a political practice, more importantly, it is an outgrowth of changing material conditions. So what? You are shadow-boxing here.
More shadowboxing.
No argument here. So what? You still haven’t made a point that touches on what I said.
That was Felix, not me. Gotta be careful with attributing things.
My purpose in using a word is to uncover the cultural effects and emotions attached to it, even when it is saying the same thing using a difference nuance.
Just as you use the word “inferior” to exact a reaction from me, so too I use the word flawed to exact the reaction that I got.
Flaw, implies a perfection, just as incomplete implies completion. Both “complete” and “perfect” referring to the same non-existent ideal.
That certain words have taken on an undesirable connotation, like the words “cynical” or “inferior” or “weak” or “liberal” in the U.S. is a topic on its own.
Compared to its stated intent.
If survival is its motive, then it fails by dying.
If the ideal is its motive, then it fails in that it never attains it.
If happiness is its motive, then it fails in never finding a final state of it.
If power is its motive, then it fails by remaining weak.
I never made any statement concerning a personal ideal. I compared the ideology, the general concept of the ideal, to the manifestations of it.
I attempted to uncover the errors in reasoning behind the belief that an idea can be the antithesis of what it produces.
If the particulars fail to adhere to the ideal they propose then they have failed to represent it. These failures then rush to place it on a pedestal, and make shame their own burden, so as to preserve the sanctity of the ideology.
Yes.
It does not matter if you are a Buddhist or not.
No contradiction.
If an ideal claims to be compassionate and loving and selfless and it produces anything but that, it fails and it survives on the denial and evasion and lies…not to mention excuses, of its adherents.
I am talking about the topic, not making personal accusation.
If you are unable to extricate yourself from the topic and tackle it objectively then you’ve been around here for far too long.
All you’ve said was that you don’t like the word “flawed” and you prefer replacing it with the word “incomplete” and then you gave me a rundown on how religion adapts to changing cultural environments, which was my point top begin with.
The topic of this thread is, if you’ve missed it, that many, if not all, popular modern ideologies and religions, attempt to separate the dogma, the belief, from the manifestations of those beliefs, implying that one cannot judge an idea by its application or failure to be applied “correctly”.
To put it metaphysically, that the apparent, cannot be used to judge the essence of the phenomenon but that the essence of it lies beyond the apparent or underlying it or outside of it.
This is a convenient way of protecting the validity of an idea’s hypothetical value. By separating it from reality and from the products of its ideals as they interact with the actual world they lay claim to an imagined state within a perfect world.
My assertion is that using this tactic one and all ideas and ideals can be defended on the grounds that it is men that fail to apply it “properly” and that the ideals remains untouched by its results.
Therefore we can say that Nazism failed in its application and that if it had succeeded, to any degree, we would all be here - most of us anyways - proclaiming its truth.
Skipping the rest because it looks like we got our meat and potatoes right here.
OK, so, this appears to be the problem that you have.
That people say the above is how it is; that you cannot judge these ideas based on their meta-representation on Earth in human history.
As a response, you seem to be saying…
And now we have another addition:
So, if I gather everything together properly, I believe I arrive at the following statement as your somewhat core concept:
An ideal is to be judged, not by it’s manifestations in history, which can be rationalized, but instead by observing and judging the immediate manifestations of the dogma in those that ascribe to its premises, as it has been applied in their real life in the real world and not by any ideal that they hold of the ideal.
Yes. The correction I would make is that it can be judged by its manifestations in history, but since history is debatable and written by those who hold power this method becomes problematic and it falls on hearsay and on selecting “reliable sources” or authorities.
The most direct and honest way is to judge an idea, a phenomenon, on its immediate presence, and not on an interpretation of the past or a hypothetical Utopian future.
History is part of the immediate, just as a human being represents the entirety of his past, genetic and experiential.
I once sat there and listened to a christian claim that Christianity cannot be judged on the Crusades, the Vatican’s stifling of scientific knowledge, its power grabs, the priests that molest little children, the Christians that congregate ion churches and then support violence. Then what the hell are we supposed to judge it on…it’s text…its theory, its scripture?
Any ideology can stand up to that test.
I can build the perfect bridge in my head and then blame it on the construction workers or the bricks i used to build it when it comes tumbling down.
That’s a pretty common approach. Read any thread in the Religion forum here and you’ll find plenty of people doing the same.
Jesus did the same thing two millenia ago. Numerous others have done the same. Religious hypocracy is a well known phenomenon. Are you bringing anything new to the table?
My question : How do you avoid the flaws that other minds are subject to?
Do you think you are alone in thinking that you are honest and motivated by clarity? Not too many people are professing to think dishonestly and motivated by fuzziness. Observance and clarity rather than happiness are good. Easier to profess than to accomplish. Most people have a blind spot that they are unaware of. That rather than there consciuosly held motivations is often what trips them up.
I asked: Against what standard do you judge an actuality?
Given human nature hypocracy is hardly surprising.
It seems you are contradicting what you said above. You said you judged Xianity by Xianity’s text. The text obviously expresses the ideal which individuals and institutions fall short of. Judge any nation by its constitution and you will find it falls short. At best an ideal is something to strive for. People think they are better for going after ideals then not. Hypocracy comes when the confuse their ideal self image with their actualized self. When that happens their self image becomes inflated. Inflated self esteem can make a person feel better. But it isn’t based in reality so it can cause problems especially for other people. These issues are not unique to religious people or institutions though.
Would people be better off if they gave up their ideals like the ancient cynics or the hippies attempted to do? Is it even possible to sel-consistently do this? Doesn’t the ideal of giving up ideals become one’s ideal?
how can i bring anything "new to the table’ when all I am faced with are the same old shit?
Avoid taking yourself and life seriously.
Realize that language refers to mental abstractions and so to artificially constructed mental models, based on simplification and ambiguity, and should not be taken literally.
Stop being afraid and face the world honestly and with as few hopes as possible.
Shall I go on…or is that also old news?
Like asking:
How do i lose weight?
We all know how, and we lash out when we are told, but putting theory into practice is where the the ideal fails to meet the real.
I can only add that most people choose to underestimate inheritance in this.
Empiricism.
The real world.
The sensually interpreted world.
Shall I be using another?
Is that not my point?
I’ve come across Christians using the ideal to defend the actions of the real, on many occasions. If you are not one of them, why are you so defensive?
Then God is but a conception of the ideal, no?
And humanism is based no the conception of an ideal, no?
No, but it would serve them better if their ideals were more realistic and based on more tangible goals.
All must have ideals and morals, at least let them have some intellectual harmony in the mind, by not merely pretending intellectual integrity but actually striving to posses it to some degree.
Next time I come across a naive idealist I’ll make sure to point him your way.
Like the Christian kind, for instance.
The trick is that I agreed with the assertion you provided in the OP, which you re-iterated. The rest of your post was pontification on your part, which is why I described it as ‘shadow-boxing’ since it was alien to the conversation at hand.
In terms of flawed vs. incomplete, I think this essay helps illustrate what I am talking about. Given a pragmatic outlook, which is essentially what you are proposing here, ‘flawed’ as a term does not make sense whereas ‘incomplete’ does. ‘Flawed’ demands an absolute in a manner that incomplete does not. The Sagrada Familia is incomplete, but few would describe it as flawed. The language being used is very important here.
On a related note, you still haven’t explained how values get incorporated into your structure, the point of my opening post on the thread. The ‘who’ as well as ‘whose’ is very key here.
If we can only judge something on it’s current manifestation in the individual, then how are we to evaluate any ideal at it’s manifestation at a given moment in time.
For instance, because it’s a constant familiarity for you, Christianity is a marked different manifestation today than it was when it was first embraced.
How, then, do you propose we judge the previous manifestations?
It’s a difficult one for sure.
The problem is that Christianity is so widely varied in what that following stands for morally that you will find plenty of people stating that Christianity is not the same thing as what caused any given historical disaster.
The reason is that their Christianity did, indeed, not have involvement.
It’s like saying the phrase, “political party”.
The political party is to blame for the disaster!
Not my political party, the whigs are NOT to blame!
Unfortunately, current Christianity keeps itself separate in it’s ideals from itself, but sees itself banded and unified in defense of itself; all holding the same lineage and ancestry.
So really, the proper statement that that Christian you were talking to should have been, “Not my form of Christianity, the Methodists had nothing to do with that!”
Methodists was just thrown in there as an example.
Now, if someone were to say, “Catholics had nothing to do with that!”, regarding most of the horrors you describe…well…I’d be right there with you in quandary.
Denial like that is actually dangerous.
In Germany, denial like that is against the law (denying the holocaust).
======
I suppose, to answer my own question from above about judging previous manifestations with the complexities of the latter half of what I showed exist by comparison to current manifestations is this.
I hold that an ideal is capable of being judged in three manners; each markedly separate from the other:
First, by it’s own merit in thought.
Second, by it’s manifestations in the past by examining the culture and people that held the manifested ideal at the time in examination.
Third, by it’s current manifestation by examining the culture and people that hold the manifested ideal under the current culture’s time.
The point is that one can actually judge Communism for early Russia, and indeed Socialism as an interest in Europe, for the time that it was manifested by attempting to understand the minds and circumstances that surrounded it.
I believe the same can be said for any religion, even Christianity in all of it’s variations through time.
This doesn’t mean that any given manifestation is right or wrong inherently in it’s practice of an ideal.
It simply means that it can be judged.
The pursuit of the Utopian world is such an ideal that has existed throughout much of civilized man’s history.
In fact, it can be said that some of the most controlling forms of government and religion have been designed and practiced with this very thought in mind; even Nazism had this pursuit, as did Communism, as did Catholicism, and as did The Republic.
The difference is that as each pursues it’s own approach to this end, man commonly witnesses another method to strike off of the list from capable of delivering that Utopian end.
Currently, the herald at hand is Democracy.
As far as I can determine, it too will fail to produce the dreamed Utopian delivery and will one day be looked back on as another failed ideal.
However, the ideal itself won’t exactly fail. What will fail will be it’s multiple manifestations over the multiple cultures that it has existed for.
So, as I constantly say around here…it’s all about the people. An ideal is but an idea to pursue; exactly how this idea is pursued is what makes each manifestation of that ideal unique to itself from the ideal.
I think what you’ve failed to appreciate is how language is made up of words that are tautologies which differ only in nuance.
The words: One, God, Thing, Substance, Perfect, Complete, Singularity, Something, Nothing, Free, all denote what does not exist.
The static antithesis to the process of existence.
Values are directly linked to the characteristics ascribed to the absolute.
What these nuances come from.
As such they characterize the mind striving towards them, even thuogh what is striven towards is unattainable and does not exist, but only as a mental signpost.
For me it is the extent of the mind’s event horizon, is perceptual limits.
Intelligence is characterized by a longer, broader event horizon, whereas simplicity by a shorter one.
A projection of the self further into the possible, spatial dimension.
Because ideals are derived through the other, cultural and social indoctrination, all values are based on socioeconomic and cultural necessity.
For this reason the emergence of nihilistic sociopolitical and spiritual dogmas, come into existence as a viable perspective, in times and in places experiencing population pressures and resource strains.
The ten commandments, for example, are socioeconomic rules, so as to maintain the stability of ownership and harmonious coexistence.
The denouncement of self, and of materialism, another necessary social value.
Altruism, yet another.
By how they interacted with the conditions of that time.
Because many of these dogmas remain ambiguous enough to be adaptable to any circumstances, how these ideals manifest themselves within each generation, and then the comparisons with how they did so in earlier times, establishes the essence of the dogmas in question.
If for example it breeds stupidity, contradictions, violence and selective reasoning, then the dogma cannot be judged on its hypothetical intentions or its idealistic perfection, but on how it has manifested itself continuously throughout the ages.
Therefore the sects are nothing more than interpretations of the same ambiguous documentations and supposed historical events.
Therefore the cults, the different sects are merely different reinterpretations to survive within the same circumstances.
A survival of the fittest in ideas.
and this common ancestry is like a common species ancestry…only here we are dealing with a superorganism.
All ideas are adaptations to current environmental conditions and so Buddhism, Christianity, or any ideal represents a necessary adaptation sometimes forced upon the population as a way of stabilizing the social unit.
The first is the common ancestor.
The second the intermediate mutation - the often missing link.
The last, is the immediate representation of the previous two, trying to adapt to current circumstances.
Nothing more profound in it than that.
There is no such thing as an ideology that is unaffected by circumstances.
The idea that an ideology is perfect when not challenged by reality, is a romantic ideal, held onto by naive minds.
It can be judged by its actions, not by its hypothetical intentions.
It already has.
The ideal will be the marketing ploy, the packaging.
The substance, the product, will be disappointing.
Exactly, the ideal cannot be judged separately from the people infected by its premises, because outside their minds, it ceases to exist.
It “infects” people?
Infection is a negative term, regardless of the intention behind using it, the term is negative.
Several of your other positions use similar negative terminology.
So I have to wonder…do you have a position against idealism?
(most of everything else you responded with was the identical position I was positing, just with some added negative slants; hence, I didn’t see much reason to respond as we see the same thing, but I address this part now because it appears the difference in our views may only come down to if you hold idealism as a negative.)
Not at all.
I have a disdain for many of the tactics people use to defend ideals that contradict their own premises and then play the self-righteous role of victim.
It’s time to perceive reality beyond the rosy colored glasses of western naivete.
Many ideals are like infections when they propose ideals that are anti-life and anti-existence, while pretending otherwise.
I have a position against ideals that pretend to be life affirming and positive when underlying their premises is self-hatred, nihilism and surrender.