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.

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

In this lesson, we’ll talk about Humanism, using the information that is generally available across the net, and some of the remarks Ryan made.

Humanism has several off-shoots, with a variety of beliefs. Some are based in religion, others in atheism, but agnosticism seems to be most prevalent. The basic ideas involved with Humanism do not require a religious concept of God, or laws laid down by a religion.

So, let’s set out the base of Humanism in bullets.

• Democratic
• Humane Action
• Human Reason
• Ethics
• Justice
• Rejection of Superstition.
• Charity and Philanthropy

So, when we take a look at these aspects, we can see a lot of what Ryan was talking about in his email.

Humane action and ethics play the most important part in this, to my view point. The way we treat other people should be with kindness and understanding. Whether or not there is a God(or gods) should have no effect on how we treat each other. Most Humanists take this a step further and volunteer, work for charity, or donate money to charitable organizations.

I’d like to take a moment, and focus on a couple of things Ryan said.

Do what is right because it’s right and there may be nobody else to do it.

That is a powerful statement. Doing what is right, when you are in the position to do so.

If we want to see good in the world we have to do it ourselves.

Again, there is a lot to this statement. Responsibility. I think that is what it really boils down to; human responsibility. It’s not just a responsibility to ourselves, but to society, and our world.

So, looking back on Humanism, I think it’s easy to see that, at its very core, it is merely the idea of treating people well and doing what we believe is right. Doesn’t sound so different from many other ideologies or religions, does it?

Jack
I Listen.

Basic Ideology 101
Lesson #24
The Battle of Responsibility

I explained to Ryan what I was looking for, and what he sent me was so personal and informative, that I asked if I could publish the entire email. So, here is what Ryan Sutter has to say about Humanism, and how he found it. Enjoy.

I was raised a Jehovah’s Witness and stayed one until I was 30 years old at which point I lost my faith in it and didn’t know what to call myself or what I believed. I took the Beliefnet Belief-O-Matic and found out that my beliefs were most closely defined as humanist. Not having really ever thought about humanism before this, I was a bit surprised to find a web site telling me that I was one.

I went on to study it a little and found that the whole idea of humanism was fairly straightforward and could be boiled down into the statement: Do what is right because it’s right and there may be nobody else to do it. In other words, we live in a world that may or not have any supernatural element, but that really should have no bearing on being a good and moral person. Goodness and morality are things you need to practice if you want them to exist in the world, they don’t come from somewhere other than us and if we don’t do them, they don’t exist. This is a compelling alternate reason for living a clean moral life as opposed to the reward/punishment model of Christianity.

You don’t do good and avoid evil in order to reap a reward or avoid a punishment, you do so simply because you wish for good in the world and you wish to avoid evil in the world and you let the supernatural aspect take care of itself, if there is such a thing.

That is humanism and it is my deep belief that even the religious person who hates or fears the “godless atheists and secular humanists” basically lives a moral life for the same fundamental reasons, if you press them on it. Most Christians will admit that they aren’t restrained from killing their neighbor and raping his life because they are afraid of God but because they know it’s the wrong thing to do. They know this innately, because they wouldn’t want it done to themselves. “Do unto others” is a very humanist statement.

Of course, in conversations with religious believers (including my own father) I’ve come to realize that this is not what humanism means to fundamentalist eyes. To a lot of people it seems that humanism means “whatever man decides to do is right” or “there is no god so we’re screwed, ACK! let’s call our pathetic plight ‘humanism’ and worship ourselves”. The first commits the naturalistic fallacy and the second conflates humanism and atheism. Humanism does not glorify people or set them up for worship. The whole concept of worship means to give praise and obedience to a higher power. When you are a human, and a humanist, you are not suddenly a higher power. In fact, it’s humbling. You look at yourself and your limited capabilities and you look at humankind and their messy psychological and sociological situations and you realize that we all need to work really hard to solve our problems, cooperate more, communicate more, help each other more, because if we are all we have then none of us is an island, none of us can operate without considering the fates of the others, and we all need each other. Kinda’ knocked me down a peg from when I thought I was personally fashioned in God’s image, while simultaneously making me feel a sense of civic and moral obligation as opposed to how I felt when I thought God would charge in and fix everything. The sense of personal responsibility implicit in humanism is extremely powerful. I think that explains why so many humanists are involved in social justice and activist causes, as well as volunteerism. They have to be, on some level, or their conscience nags at them because all it takes for bad people to have their way is for good people to do nothing.

I have found a lot of prejudice against humanism over the last 5
years. People say Hitler and Stalin and Pol Pot were humanists, to
which I say bullshit. Humanism is a philosophical justification for moral and humane behavior. If a psychopath or despot commits acts of atrocity and cruelty, their actions are immoral and inhumane and therefore anti-humanist, whether they believe in a supernatural or not. Like I mentioned earlier, humanism does not say there is no God, humanism says that regardless of the metaphysical state of things, if we want to see good in the world we have to do it ourselves. The sad fact is that some people decide their is no God so they DO murder their next door neighbor and rape his wife, and other people do the exact same thing and say God made them do it, or the Devil, or whatever. The point is, that any behavior that is anti-human is anti-humanist and people can decide to be evil with or without belief in God. When people start to connect the two questions of “Does God exist” and “How should I behave” as if they are inextricably linked they are committing a fallacy. They are two separate questions that do not necessarily relate.

Thanks for the insight, Ryan.

Jack
I Listen.

Basic Ideology 101
Lesson #23
The Battle of Human Action

My computer’s hard drive crashed on me, I’m updating through the use of an Ubuntu LiveCD. I’m going to attempt to replace the drive as soon as I can, hopefully remedying the problem.

Jack
I Listen.

Update
10/01/09

I lost that passion some time ago. Life kicked me in the ass, and I let myself become consumed in self-loathing and self-pity. I was weak, and lost all focus. My dreams tossed to the wayside. I just want to feel that way again. Simple. Perfect. Loved. My dreams twisted, contorted, converged, because of my lack of, no, my loss of faith. My lack of confidence.

I’m relearning that passion. I’m remembering that spin, and I can taste wine, and dancing, and God, so, so very close. When the dreams are too real, and the spin too fast, and the wine too strong, I know that I am on the right path again.

What path do you walk?

—-

Jack
I Listen.

Basic Ideology 101

Lesson #20
The Battle of Re-Realization

It’s easy to forget that we have perfection in our hands when times are rough. Richard Matheson spent a lifetime writing horror and dark fantasy, to end up his masterwork as one of the greatest love stories ever told. Why did it take so long? Love is so hard to express, even for the most sensitive of us. Passion is so much easier. This is why we are barraged by “love stories” that are nothing more than sex driven fantasies. In the rare instance that passion and love meet, we find something truly great. Something that transcends words. The love story is now even harder to tell, and it can become downright scary.

As writers, when we find this kind of extraordinary relationship, our first instinct is to run. We want to run because for the first time in our lives we have no words to describe what is happening to us. It’s confusing, we stumble, we fall. We falter. You see, in running, we can understand, in words. The only way we really understand anything.

With love comes fear, but hopefully passion and love together can offset our natural fear of loss.

In Matheson’s What Dreams May Come, the main character has to come face to face with not only his greatest fear, but also the greatest fear of the majority of mankind. Is that what makes it so compelling? It is definitely what makes it ring so true in the hearts of so many.

By using this novel, I’ve skirted myself(safely around), for now, the subject of my own feelings and fears. Eventually I’ll face them down, as Matheson, and so many others have, finding the strength in their constant growth.

Jack.
I Listen.

Fragments
#5
What Dreams May Come

In other news.. oh wait.. that’s right.. there isn’t any.

Jack
I Listen.

Monday Update
March 30, 2009

The Tao of Minus
—-

Mancini was a little startled when Jane asked about the Akashic Library. But he knew that she had that right, even if she did not have that power.

So, they talked at length about the great teachers of the past, about the holy guardian angel, and about the Akashic Library.

He suggested she take the six month sojourn to learn about the Holy Guardian Angel before trying to access the Akashic Library.

“But… hmm.. When Minus returns, we will talk. He may have a short cut for you. You have every right to view it for yourself. Especially since I have an oath to not speak of what I see there. Minus is not allowed to enter. But neither of us really know why. Sometimes, it’s almost like he has no book. Like his lifetime is not recorded, as it is with the rest of us.”

Jane didn’t know how to answer. Mancini appeared puzzled, even in his ghostly astral form.

Mancini continued, “The information I have about Minus is from my personal experience with him, and from reading the life books of others that have interacted with him. There are large blank periods, that I can find no information on. Five years ago, shortly after we had met, he completely disappeared. No one knows why. Or where he was. He refuses to talk about it.”

“From what I’ve learned of alacrity,” Jane interjected, “Is it possible that he got lost in it?”

“It’s possible. But Othin practices alacrity too.. I’d think Othin would have been able to find him…”

“And then he disappeared for three years with me, at that bar..” Jane was trying to string together the facts. This whole mess was terribly confusing to her. She had never known magic like this. All of these things were brand new to her.

“Yes, that’s right. Minus is… well, odd. It’s almost like he has a cloaking ability. Kotoko witnessed it with trying to find this house. This house is totally off the official radar. Only a handful of people know it’s here at all. But it has been here for fifty years at least.

“Although it wasn’t his fault, you two were completely masked inside that bar. In the same way, Minus is completely hidden now, at the world tree. No magic can find him there. If you were to walk up to the exact tree he was on, you would not be able to see him.”

“Does he know this,” asked Jane.

“Sometimes.. Definitely not all of the time. He doesn’t dabble in divination, so he really doesn’t understand the concept at all. All of his magic comes naturally, through self-sacrifice.”

“Like now? Like his trip to the world tree?” Jane’s curiosity was peaked.

“Yes,” the doctor answered. “Just like now. This is not the first time he has performed the self-sacrifice rituals for knowledge, or power. It’s almost like the gods favor him. His family has no history of magical blood. Unlike me and you. There is no reason for Minus to have the power and understanding that he does. I’ve spent a long, long time trying to figure it out.”

“What about Othin? I thought he was Minus’ uncle?” Jane interjected.

“Othin is not a blood relative. He was a friend of Minus’ mother. But she never knew about Othin’s magical side life. You see, to most people, Othin just looks and acts like an old, burned-out hippie. I’ve known him for five years. He has not aged a day, but we can discuss that later.

“It really boils down to the fact that Minus basically gave me my powers. I’m certain that he has had a positive impact on your magic as well. Probably Kotoko, too. Othin often tells me about personal relationships with gods, but I usually chalk it up to metaphysical mumbo-jumbo. Most of the gods are dead, or were never there to begin with. Maybe I should reconsider that. We’ll talk to Minus about it when he returns. Not long left.”

And so, that night, Jane began to practice astral travel to see if she could find this Holy Guardian Angel and the Akashic Library. She was tired of being out of the loop. She was worried about Minus, and she had to do something about it.

—-

Jack
Listen.

The Cost of Magic
Section #24
The Tao of Minus