RE: You Are Probably Overgeneralising In Debates
Firstly, excellent article. It is important that one also do not get too caught up in one's cleverness, and want to shoot down to many others that are floundering around this thing we call life. I have enjoyed many of your articles, and find that we are probably very close in terms of values and philosophy. However, (there is always a but right), even if I completely agree with your statements around generalisation, I do not believe your assertion of all ideologies being equal holds true, and it is simply the executors of these that are the problem. It is exactly because humans create these ideologies that there are good and bad ones. You mentioned communism, and I can add Nazism and Apartheid to that list. These are essentially very much based on toe the line or die. I would say that like some cars being built well and safe and kill fewer people, and others poorly designed and probably kill more, same goes with ideologies. One should not be to general about all ideologies I suppose.
@robertm
Thank you.
I don't believe in equality as you know. I believe every single thing is different and everything is related in context with it's environment.
All ideologies are only similar when it comes to how they are perceived, NOT how they are defined.
All ideologies are perceived as concepts that demand people to group together.
People group together to oppose another group. This is the very definition of the group and what binds all ideologies together.
Remember, even a well build car can kill more people than a porrly made one. It depends on the driver, not the car. Same applies about ideologies. Fascism and Communism evolved out of the nation-state being threatened by external factors. The factors were mainly population explosion after the medical and industrial revolution, tripling our lifespan. Lack of resources made nations collide (most likely) and the old imperial ideals, emerged. Examining history objectively, through the spectrum of evolutionary anthropology, this is how the events most likely played out. This is why they could only belong to that specific time in history and nowhere else.
Context is vital when examining history. One cannot possibly assert today that one is a communist or a fascist. Those are just sensationalist epithets to convey an argument.
This is the usual, very old, divide and rule technique.
it is rather something ingrained in our nature. we just need to fight it
Good answer @kuriacos.
I suppose my key point is that while this is theoretically very true in real human engagements even those that takes no position has a position. And often these lack of position people are the ones that tend to be so focused on fight any position someone else knows, that they do not realise how they themselves by taking an opposing position, even if it is to take no position is actually an ideology.
You indeed touch on some very good points about the nature of history and evolution in the social domain, and I like your theories. But one can also at times look to hard for context, and thus start creating post facto context. At the time Hitler came to power, there was many different ideologies as there are today, all trying to deal with similar issues of industrialisation and wealth equality and distribution, albeit on nation, or individual levels. My view is that I do not mind anyone's ideology, as long as it leaves room for opposing ideologies. Certain ideologies leave by their very nature no room. other ideologies as a matter of principle give that room, but can be manipulated to groups wills and thus essentially move of from their actual underlying value system. Hijacked democracy is no longer democracy, and monopolistic capitalism is no longer capitalism. These are of course simplified views and we can spend many an evening discussing this, preferably over a bottle of wine. For me right and wrong is less important, but the fact that I get to engage and share my thoughts with thinkers like yourself is far more important
Thanks for your time and effort to express your views and share your knowledge. It is appreciated.
All ideologies leave room. Thing is, not all administrations of those ideologies leave room. Even in here in so called anarchic, voluntarist, decentralised steemit one could come and flag me and silence me completely Orwell-1984-Style.
Democracy is always the law of the jungle and monocapitalistic capitalism (you mean corporatism) is not capitalism. (i will write a dedicated article for that).
I also like to share my thoughts. I like our conversations. Lets keep them coming. I followed you so we can talk about them
Thanks for the reply. Will read that article, as it is a topic I am very interested in.