Ideology

From The Truth Of Things:

IDEOLOGY – Gerhart Niemeyer & Bruce Frohnen


Posted by Nick Ryker on September 4, 2010



In a social setting or “society,” as the actual living “thing” of human beings living in association together in some sort of structure, in order to understand not only The Big Picture of “what’s going on” around us, from next door to the nation, and nowadays to The World, we need to know who and what is “working on us.”



Especially for those involved IN and with the “bigger structures,” for example those who are “running” the “Global Economy” and its growing political and military components, such people are NOT “just getting together for tea” and making decisions “off the cuff.” They are “following” something. What is that ”something?”



For of most of Humanity’s History, that “followed something” was one kind or another of Religion. No “deep” definitions here – I take it for granted that the overwhelming majority of people reading this Blog have both some comprehension and some understanding of the meaning of “Religion” in some sense. However, there is something that is larger than “Religion”, and most of those things called “Religion,” or “a Religion.” What is that “something? IDEOLOGY.



“OK, What is “Ideology?” To answer that question, I offer the following very brief but LOADED article from one of my favorite organizations, the Intercollegiate Studies Institute, in Wilmington, DE. It is as follows:







Ideology

Gerhart Niemeyer and Bruce Frohnen – 04/25/08

The term “ideology” is often used simply as a substitute for the word “philosophy” or even “worldview.” Thus, it is often said that conservatism is in need of “an ideology” or a more coherent set of principles on which to base its policy prescriptions. But most intellectual conservatives have a very different view of ideology.



The term “ideology” was first coined by Destutt de Tracy in his Elemens d’ideologie (1800–1815). Tracy was referring to a science of ideas. Yet, when Napoleon publicly ridiculed “ideologists,” he gave the term a pejorative character it retains to this day. Karl Marx linked the term to the notion of class consciousness in dismissing the ideas of the ruling, bourgeois class as nothing but deceptions of the oppressed proletariat. The twentieth-century rise of communism, fascism, and National Socialism to the level of totalitarian regimes motivated conservative thinkers in particular to consider the distinction between ideology and nonideological political philosophy.



Gerhart Niemeyer, following Eric Voegelin, referred to ideology as “the fallacious immanentization of divine salvation.” By this he meant that an ideology is a recipe for bringing heaven down to earth. Modern thinkers, from Rousseau to Hegel to Marx, have rejected Augustine’s understanding that the end of history will be the end of the world, at which time man will face his creator to answer for his actions, and at which time alone he may look for the beatific vision. Instead, ideologists seek to bring history to an end here and now. They construct theoretical systems they believe point to the one true and good human society and then seek great men, movements, or events to bring them to reality, thus ending history in a perfect life lived on earth.



A common criticism of thinkers of the Enlightenment—from Descartes to Rousseau at least—is that they sought to make men into gods. Dispensing with spiritual matters, these thinkers reduced the world to data that can be manipulated by the human mind, thus giving man the impression that he can manipulate reality itself. This mistake regarding the nature of reality led to the belief that man also could save himself from the tragedies of life, be they sickness, war, or the drudgery of work. This is the means by which the utopian vision was born. Utopia is the goal of ideology because ideology is the drive to create a new society, based on the system of the ideologist, that will “save” us, bring us into a heaven that is full of abundance but lacking the tragedies of a real life. Yet one should note that few of the actual human beings involved actually would play the role of gods. Marx’s unalienated man may be free to shift aimlessly from occupation to occupation, but it is Marx, in combination with the god-like men who bring about the revolution, who has made his life possible. Contemporary ideologies, despite their egalitarian rhetoric, also rely on the god-like ideologist to “liberate” each of us from the ties that bind us to our old institutions, our old ways, and even our old beliefs. And, because anyone who fails to fully and enthusiastically work for the great vision is undermining utopia—denying paradise to everyone around him—that person must be dealt with harshly so that everyone will work all the harder to make paradise a reality. It is no wonder then, in the conservative view, that ideological politics, promising heaven on earth, has produced murderous, hellish police states wherever it has gained power.



Conservatives worry that our society has become overrun with ideology. For example, modern education theory, based in the thought of John Dewey, is at root an ideology. It puts teachers, counselors, and other “facilitators” in the role of gods. These “nonjudgmental” leaders will use various techniques to free us from the prejudices that make us too judgmental and cause us to accept the oppressions of inegalitarian social structures (e.g., the traditional family). By freeing us from these attachments and beliefs, educational ideology would cause us to “choose” the life of unencumbered choice in which one lifestyle is as moral as another and in which we all can agree that the state should protect us from oppression and from the consequences of our own actions.



Real philosophy, in the conservative view, maintains its connection with the broad stream of Western philosophical enquiry. That tradition began with Plato’s admission that we are ignorant but should struggle on in the task of measuring what can be measured. Following Aristotle, moreover, it seeks tools appropriate for measuring whatever aspect of reality we currently are examining rather than pretending that we can make reality “fit” the tools we happen to have at hand. Perhaps most crucially, in the conservative view, the Western philosophical tradition recognizes that there is a purpose to nature, to man, and to man’s own creations that lies beyond this world. And this means that our inquiries, as well as our daily conduct, must be carried out with the realization that we will not achieve paradise here on earth, but that we will answer to a power higher than ourselves for the actions we take and the spirit in which we take them.



All this makes philosophy, properly understood, an activity far divorced from the dreamy systems and murderous policies of ideology.



Further Reading



•Frohnen, Bruce. The New Communitarians and the Crisis of Modern Liberalism. Lawrence, Kan.: University Press of Kansas, 1996.

•Niemeyer, Gerhart. “Enlightenment to Ideology.” In Within and Above Ourselves. Wilmington, Del.: Intercollegiate Studies Institute, 1996.

Now, hopefully, you have some better understanding of “The Tool,” and “the tools” within “The Tool,” that the self-defined and SELF-CHOSEN Power Elites use to CONTROL and MANIPULATE US – the subjects (human beings) as OBJECTS they seek to control and use to achieve their conception of “Heaven-on-Earth,” such as the MONO-RACE New World Order; Hitler’s “Third Reich” with “resurrected” Aryans using Darwin’s theories of “Evolution” and human-controlled genetic manipulation to accomplish “the change,” just as today’s New School and Frankfurt School “theories” are being used to eliminate the White race via miscegenation, which has INCREASED 1,5OO PER CENT SINCE 2008; World Communism; and others that have lusted for “world-wide” control and domination.

Lastly, please note the definition of “Ideology” given at the beginning of the third paragraph: Basically, in more simple and direct language, ALL Ideologies seek to REPLACE and REMOVE God at the Center of man’s beliefs and “worship” – i.e. that which in Reality absorbs and “guides” (more like “controls”) our consciousness – our “evertday thoughts” and behavior. It DOESN’T MATTER if you “Go to Church” on Sunday – WHAT and WHO do you spend MOST OF YOUR TIME giving your attention to? For WHAT? For WHOM? THERE and THAT is “your god!”

The secular Ideologies take your mind off – REPLACES – and then substitutes for – REMOVES – God. For example, what do most people today “Believe IN?” Science, Darwinism, psychology, and ONLY that “Which can be seen, heard, felt or touched, or measured somehow,” as a young about twenty years-of-age forcefully asserted to me 15 or so years ago. And it seems to me it’s only gotten worse since then.

And during “the week,” WHAT and WHOM do they “serve” (“work for”) and FOR WHAT?? Simple: “The Boss,” “the Workplace,” “the job,” and ALL for . . . a paycheck, a salary, and so on.

The “Take Over” is complete. And we wonder why things have “gone wrong.”