Now, at the bottom of every post and page, you can find Sociable buttons! This makes it easy to share my posts with all your friends and neighbors through whatever social network you prefer(or all of them!).

I’ve also added a formspring widget in the right sidebar, so you can ask me anything directly from Loki Listens! Ask anything at all! I don’t care how ridiculous or inappropriate the question is, it’ll receive an answer. To go with this widget, there’s an RSS feed above it with previous questions and answers.

Lots of new stuff.

Jack
I Listen.

update.

Read the new piece here!

Miss the first 2? Check them out here:

Tribe of the Star Part 1
Tribe of the Star Part 2

Jack
I Listen.

HubPages
Fiction

… in purgatory you knew that you were going either to hell or to heaven, and it was up to you where you went. With the joys and freedom of heaven as a carrot, you strove like hell in purgatory. You knew the theory of how to get the ticket to heaven. But the practice… ah, the practice… that eluded you. You snatched it away from yourself.

-Philip Jose Farmer: Gods of Riverworld

Jack
I Listen.

Basic Ideology 101
Lesson #28
The Battle of Limbo

This is not to say that I stopped writing all together. I’ve made a lot of headway on my two big fiction projects, The Cost of Magic, and The Tribe of the Star. The Tribe of the Star has taken on a pleasant change of tone, which I think, and my girlfriend concurs, will be much more appealing to the reader. You’ll get to see the first of those pieces online here in the next couple of days.

I started out posting The Cost of Magic here at Loki Listens every time I added to it. I dropped that in favor of completing it and polishing it after 20 some-odd parts. It’s become a bit of an epic work for me, being the longest piece of fiction I have ever written. It’s still a long way from completion, but I have very high hopes for it. To be cliche, it’s a labor of love.

Jack
I Still Listen.

Update

I am a lover of both His benevolence and severity!
Amazing it is that I’m in love with these opposites!

Jack
I Listen.

Basic Ideology 101
Lesson #27
The Battle of Nafs

————-

The Fear permeates the city with a dense fog in the mornings. As the day lingers, the fog dissipates, but the Fear just stretches out over the people, engulfing us all in its decadence.

We stroll the streets, looking for some kind of trouble to get into. But nothing comes. Sometimes it’s like that. No matter what you do, or where you are, you can’t get anything done. Creativity fades and seeps through the cracks in the sidewalk and you are left with nothing but some sunburn.

Courting the muse is a long forgotten path. These days people don’t wait for inspiration, or even try to draw in inspiration. They just do. And so we end up with a bunch of crap that is passed for “art” or “poetry” or “fiction” or any number of other things. But when you see it, it just fucking bores you to tears.

Court your muse. Find your inspiration. Then bang out that piece of crap you’ll never be proud of. Life keeps on moving down the line. The train will not remember you, and it does not forgive. Walk out on the tracks and stare at the ground. See those are steel rails? Is this what we’ve become?

And so here I am, waxing melancholic, for no reason other than I know not what to write.

Jack
I Listen.

Fragment #7
May 06, 2008

And still The Weaver plies his loom, whose warp and woof is wretched Man. Weaving th’ unpattern’d dark design, so dark we doubt it owns a plan.

-Sir Richard Francis Burton; The Kasidah of Haji Abdu al-Yazdi

Jack
I Listen.

Quotations 1
The Weaver

In hopes of opening some minds. Maybe clear away some obstacles for some one. Any one.

The idea is to give you all of the information you need to create your own world-view. An informed and accepting world-view, completely your own. Creating a philosophical, theosophical, ethical, and moral system that makes you happy. Your ideology.

Is that too lofty? Maybe.

Jack
I Listen.

Basic Ideology 101
Lesson #26
The Battle of Purpose

In the simplest of terms, ideology is the study of ideas.

In the previous philosophical series, Developmental Theology 089, we talked about very basic ideas that can help develop an open mind, and teach us how to create our own philosophical views, overlooking prior prejudices. You can read the entire Developmental Theology series in this PDF.

With the foundation built in Developmental Theology, my hope is to extend this learning with my Basic Ideology lessons. These lessons haven’t seen the kind of popularity as the former lessons. I think this is because the ideas and concepts are more complex. I’ve struggled with making the subject itself more accessible to the everyday person, with no prior knowledge of philosophical concepts. I’m beginning to think this is the mistake. It has been suggested that to better understand the current lessons, one should have read the prior lessons.

Which leads us to this lesson. I’ve provided a back link, so those who are behind, but would like to catch up, can. I’ll be working on better ways to do this as we continue these lessons.

Back to the question at hand: What is ideology?

Well, it is indeed the study of ideas, but it is also much more personal than that. Every person adheres to an ideology, whether they realize it or not. It is the sum total of one’s beliefs concerning right and wrong, and the degree to which things are right and wrong. Further it includes a person’s concepts of justice, punishment, reward, and how to deal with our own actions, as well as the actions of others.

Sometimes these ideologies have names, such as Humanism, which we talked about in the last two lessons, or a religious grouping. More often, one’s ideology is very personal, and crosses over many identified ideologies, as well as those without a name. It is influenced by events in life, and their effects, the things children are taught by their parents and other authority figures, books read, and things studied. Personal ideologies are constantly changing and evolving as new ideas and experiences are introduced.

I believe that by talking about these ideas, we can shift our focus and purposely evolve our own concepts. And in this sharing, we might find that we are not so different, despite our personal ideologies. Helping to build the community of man is the most important thing to which a person can aspire. And it’s what I aspire to here, and I hope at least some of my readers are with me on this cause.

Jack
I Listen.

Basic Ideology 101
Lesson #25
The Battle of Focus

Check out the first piece now!

Jack
I Listen.

HubPages
Fiction