What is Ideology?

What is ideology? The term is commonly used, but, precisely what it is, and is not, and its significance, I think is not entirely clear to most people, currently. I suppose the most commonly known and accepted forms of ideology that are accepted and understood by most people are religious and economic in nature. So, communism and capitalism are economics ideologies, and christianity and islam are religious ideologies, and they are clearly distinct in many respects from each other. Now, of course, even this is debatable. I knew a man once, whose father had escaped from Bulgaria following WWII, to the US. He said he asked his father once what the real difference was between communism and capitalism was, and he said "not a thing". Now, bear in mind, this man hadn't been particularly successful in either society, kind of lower middle class in both. A working stiff, if you like. And, actually, from the standpoint of the average working stiff, there might not be really much difference between capitalism and communism. There are probably differences, but not particularly at that level, perhaps. In a general sort of way, capitalism is rather like survival of the fittest, on the basis of possessing money, where possession of money is the criterion of fitness. Communism is about centralized government control to try to arrange social progress and prosperity. Christianity and Islam are the two most important religions the world currently, and have been for some time. Both are evangelical religions that aggressively proselytize, which might explain their success and power. And, there are clear distinctions between the two. Christianity is the more transcendental of the two, the more concerned with abstractions of good and evil, and with a hypothetical afterlife. Islam is much more pragmatic, much more a religion of this world. I might argue that Mohommad was a political science and marketing genius, rather easily, I think, and that the Koran is a kind of popularized political science textbook for founding a legitimate government system very simply, by simple people. Arguably, Christianity was developed as an antidote to the pragmatism and materialism of the Roman Empire, seeking more universal ideals, while Islam was an antidote to the abstractions and fundamental irrationality of Christianity. Of course, there are other kinds of ideologies. Other religions, other economic systems. Also, other approaches to life that could be called ideologies. I would argue that the "scientific method", as practiced in universities and research laboratories, is a kind of ideology. The notion that systematic experimentation, as practiced systematically, will lead to inevitable progress, is definitely an act of faith. We really don't know for sure whether it works or not, despite the absolute insistence of professional scientists and engineers, because these same scientists and engineers inevitably claim that they were using the scientific method, whatever they did or did not do! The claim of inevitable progress is quite universal by engineers and scientists, whether they actually ever make any progress, or not! #philosophy #metaphysics #ethics #politics #communism #capitalism #christianity #islam #science