A World of Ideology

It is arguable, indeed more that arguable, that all of the worlds ideologies and religions are ‘formulae’ designed, above all else, to provide a structure for mankind to inhabit safely in the knowledge that their lives do indeed now have meaning. It is often implicit, if not exactly explicit, in all ideologies that meanings are assigned to the world or the actions of man enabling an event or historical end to come about. Individual meaning is achieved by being part of this process of bringing about such a desired end. Being part of the process becomes meaningful for those absorbed into their particular ideological paradigm. Yet without at least a reasonable level of understanding of the flow of history or God’s Plan or whatever the overarching scheme in question it becomes impossible to gauge the significance of these larger endeavours in which we hope and expect to find meaning whilst being embedded within them.

It soon transpires that when examined to any great degree such structures hold scant refuge for the meaning hungry individual and that any psychological benefits derived from them are often based to a significant degree on the active ignorance of their deficiencies. Without the level of ignorance required for belief to take hold the beliefs themselves wither and die under constant investigation. It is not surprising that the probing questioning of any ideology – either secular or theistic – is considered as the highest heresy resulting in expulsion and even death. Serious investigation into the roots of meaning can be a very dangerous business indeed. When an ideology is called into question this is often perceived as a direct attack on the ideologies adherents who have used it to assign meaning to their lives. Such an ‘attack’ has the very real possibility of unearthing the fact that any meaning associated with a particular ideology is simply a human fabrication and nothing more. The understandable inconsistencies within many religions in particular have, upon reflection, turned people away from their faith in whichever particular God they previously worshiped. Such abandonment, not surprisingly, can lead to deep despair and possibly suicide.

[Another slightly amended extract from my MA dissertation: The Death of God and the Challenge of Nihilism.]