Blog Archives
Dogma
Passport picture of Willard Van Orman Quine (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
A Dogma is a doctrine or a creed that can refer to religious or non-religious belief. The word “dogma” comes from the Greek dogma (“opinion” or “that which seems good”).¹ Dogma often refers to beliefs articulated and endorsed by the Papacy of the Roman Catholic Church, apparently derived from divine revelation, and to be accepted by believers despite the lack of conventional scientific evidence to support them.
But the word dogma has also been applied within the philosophy of science. For instance, Willard Quine wrote a seminal paper, Two Dogmas of Empiricism, which levels a devastating critique of those who uncritically accept truth claims made by scientists.²
In everyday usage, the word dogma can refer to any kind of authoritarian claim that demands or depends on unquestioning belief. For instance, we have dogmas about healthy eating habits, normal sleep patterns, the efficacy of some green products, what constitutes intelligence and success, to name a few.
Related Posts » Aquinas (St. Thomas), Assumption, Church Fathers, Doctrine, Enlightenment, Heterodox, Holy Spirit, Infallibility, Postmodernism, Science, Transubstantiation, Wisdom
—
¹ S. G. F. Brandon (ed.) Dictionary of Comparative Religion, 1971, pp. 244-245.
² Unfortunately, if someone is callow or careless enough to be uncritically blinded by science, they probably won’t take the time to try to understand what Quine is saying.
Related articles
- Mary Ever-Virgin: Suggested Reading For ++ Mueller (mundabor.wordpress.com)
- I Am Not Looking for a Substitute Dogma (atheistrev.com)
- Ideas, Not Dogmas (murph929.wordpress.com)
- Archbishop Mueller Introduces Himself. (mundabor.wordpress.com)
- The necessity of the Assumption: Five reasons… (catholicexchange.com)
- The Ten Dogmas Of Modern Science (wariscrime.com)
- One Dogma For Another (dangeroustalk.net)
- Archbishop Mueller Still Hasn’t Explained Anything (mundabor.wordpress.com)
- The Ten Dogmas Of Modern Science: Rupert Sheldrake (talesfromthelou.wordpress.com)
- Karma or Dogma? (justinhohn.typepad.com)
Hegemony
Philip II of King of Macedon, Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek via Wikipedia
Hegemony is a political science term with ancient roots.
In the Greco–Roman world of 5th century European Classical antiquity, the city-state of Sparta was the hegemon of the Peloponnesian League (6th – 4th centuries BC); King Philip II of Macedon was the hegemon of the League of Corinth, in 337 BC, (a kingship he willed to his son, Alexander the Great).¹
In the 19th century historians used the term to describe one nation’s power over another, and by implication, the whole notion of Imperialism.
The Italian Marxist Antonio Gramsci (1891 – 1937) was the first to use hegemony to describe the idea of a ruling class socially and economically dominating others within a given society.
The contemporary sociological meaning of the term hegemony points to an entire system of cultural values and practices existing within interconnected and (apparently) legitimate social institutions (e.g. markets, legal system, government, education, religion and media) which the powerful allegedly use to oppress the powerless.
Image by AFSC Photos via Flickr
Along these lines, the French social thinker Bourdieu, Pierre (1930-2002) introduced the idea of “cultural capital” to try to explain the complex relations contributing to societal inequity, discrimination and domination.
For all its flaws, the recent “Occupy movement” (where protestors are sweeping the globe in protest of being “have-nots” apparently marginalized by a few wealthy “haves”)² raises the question of institutional legitimacy, which just a few decades ago, was certainly not a mainstream issue and hardly questioned by most people in the G8.
—
¹ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hegemony
² http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Occupy_movement
Related Posts » Discourse, Foucault (Michel)
Related articles
- US Hegemony and Global Power Relations: Now What? (atthefootnote.com)
- Can America function without a dominant culture? (demolishingdisparity.wordpress.com)
- Behold the Awesome Power of Demographic Hegemony (chariotofreaction.blogspot.com)
- Eleventh Circuit Dismisses Alien Tort Statute Claim (volokh.com)
- Gramsci and Foucault: A Reassessment. Call for chapters (2011) (foucaultnews.wordpress.com)
- The Meanings of Space (scienceray.com)
- The Salad Days: Hegemony Rome (rockpapershotgun.com)
- What was the result of Peloponnesian war for Athens and Greece (wiki.answers.com)
- Why I don’t write (chariotofreaction.blogspot.com)
- WHY DO JOURNALISTS love Twitter and hate blogging? “Blogging was a direct attack on MSM hegemony at… (pajamasmedia.com)
Individual Rights and Freedoms
Detail from Corrupt Legislation. Mural by Elihu Vedder. Lobby to Main Reading Room, Library of Congress Thomas Jefferson Building, Washington, D.C. via Wikipedia
Individual Rights and Freedoms is an admirable political ideal that aims to defend the fundamental rights of an individual within society. However, once put into political practice, defining and upholding the idea of individual rights and freedoms usually presents an ongoing challenge.
For sociologists like Zygmunt Baumann, modern democracies exhibit an uneasy tension between individual rights on the one hand, and individual freedoms on the other hand.
The problems is this: How can individuals be perfectly free while belonging to a society which by definition requires some kind of functional interdependence? What if, for example, your neighbors’ freedom to have a party interferes with your right to sleep at night or, if you work the night shift, during the daytime?
Due to potential conflicts like these we have laws that are continually being created or modified to try to protect and promote individual rights, as well as the ideals upheld by a certain social body.
This sounds great. But some like Scott Turrow suggest that laws do not necessarily solve problems because justice systems often favor high status groups at the expense of lower status groups. And in unduly corrupt societies, legal systems tend to go lightly on some offenders while slamming others.
The following outlines some of the issues about rights and freedoms as experienced in Canada: “The Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms.”
Related Posts » Psychosis, Corruption
Related articles
- What is the difference between individual rights and public order advocates and what is the main source of tension between these two perspectives (wiki.answers.com)
- Rights of an Individual Versus Duties Towards the Society (thelawfile.wordpress.com)
- Do Groups Have Any Rights? (lightandtruthonline.com)
- Salvation: Collective or Individual? (truehumanist.wordpress.com)
- AHRC and RCT launches the Asian Alliance against Torture and Ill-Treatment (AAATI) (westpapuamedia.info)
- Bullshit (lightandtruthonline.com)
- Free Nation… (torontospeaksup.wordpress.com)
- Trying to Define Criminal Law (socyberty.com)
- Christian Crees Tear Down Sweat Lodge (indiancountrytodaymedianetwork.com)
- Virginia City Limits Confederate Flag-Flying (newser.com)
Ideology
A segment of a social network via Wikipedia
The word ideology is fairly well known today but not too long ago its mention, except among sociologists and historians, would probably have been met with a blank stare.
Ideology refers to a body of social, economic or political ideas and beliefs informing a person, a group or a nation. At least, this is the standard dictionary view. Social thinkers – who tend to question dictionary definitions – argue that ideology is an often deceptive set of beliefs willingly or possibly unwittingly advanced by those with the social power to do so.
According to Karl Marx, Roland Barthes and, to some extent, Michel Foucault, the unwitting masses tend to reproduce ideologies until the point where they become aware of the shallow and deceptive character of a given ideology.
At this time the so-called ordinary person, and not just the so-called intellectuals, may try to change or even revolutionize ideologies.
It’s been argued that all religions contain an ideological component. And this may be true. But to reduce the spiritual aspect of religious experience to mere ideology is probably a mistake or, at least, incomplete.
Academic treatments of the idea of ideology are often complicated and extensive. And, one could say, that although they may appear radical and progressive to naive young students, in reality the academic treatment of ideology is still, for the most part “safe,” and thus ironically reproduces the very social structures and attendant issues which are outlined in class (along with those issues that are overlooked).
That’s a cynical view, of course. And like any opinion, it’s biased and incomplete. Another view is that it’s better to talk about some things than entirely ignore or deny their existence. And social change need not be revolutionary but can, in fact, be gradual or subtle. So, university is not necessarily just “finishing school” but can help to spark young minds into positive action.
Another thing to consider about ideology – or, more properly, academic views about ideology – is that it need not be an evil or sinister process. Ideologies can be good or, at least, better than competing ones. This point is often overlooked by derisive professors who seem to be lopsidedly critical and unfairly trash the very system that gives them their bread and butter.
In the arts, Canadian musician Bruce Cockburn had this to say in the 1980′s song, “Call it Democracy.” I’m not sure what his stance would be today.
Sinister cynical instrument
Who makes the gun into a sacrament –
The only response to the deification
Of tyranny by so-called “developed” nations’
Idolatry of ideology.¹
¹ Full lyrics and subsequent author comments (up to 2005) here: http://cockburnproject.net/songs&music/atcid.html
Related Posts » Advertising, Corruption, Discourse, False Consciousness, Hegemony, Symbol
Related articles
- My Political Ideology (palakmathur.wordpress.com)
- The Tea Party continues to show its intellectual,ideological and moral bankruptcy (thekeyview.com)
- Modernizing and liberalizing the Communism – releasing socialist activists linked to communists. (eekaa.wordpress.com)
- How do we take control of the agenda from the GOP? (americablog.com)
- The Ideology of the London Riots (forbes.com)
- Ideological Inebriation on Capitol Hill (nader.org)
- The Willful Ignorance of Positive Thinking Ideology (scotteriology.wordpress.com)
- Ideologies 101 (andrewsullivan.thedailybeast.com)
- Yet the Left Wonders Why the President Spurns Them?: (brothersjuddblog.com)
- Ideology Serves No One (albw51.wordpress.com)
Politically Correct
Politically Correct: _rockinfree / Claire Powers
The term “politically correct” describes an idea that the majority – or a highly visible group – in a given historical time period see as true or acceptable.
When a politically correct idea takes hold, many follow suit and boldly proclaim with an almost religious certainty some ‘right’ idea or course of action that could just be an ephemeral, ideological trend.
The classical French sociologist Alexis de Tocqueville (1805-1859) argued that democracy’s emphasis on equality could possibly squelch individuality, leading to a suffocating majority rule characterized by total conformity.
In Biblical lore, Pontius Pilate voices the philosophical essence of political correctness when he says to Jesus Christ:
What is Truth! (John, 18:38 NASB).
Likewise, in Andrew Lloyd Webber’s rock opera Jesus Christ Superstar, Pilate sarcastically says:
But what is truth? Is truth unchanging law? We both have truths. Are mine the same as yours?
And the following from the New Testament offers a rather scathing view of worldly wisdom, which could be seen as a kind of political correctness:
Let no man deceive himself. If any man among you thinks that he is wise in this age, he must become foolish, so that he may become wise. For the wisdom of this world is foolishness before God. For it is written, “He is THE ONE WHO CATCHES THE WISE IN THEIR CRAFTINESS”; and again, “THE LORD KNOWS THE REASONINGS of the wise, THAT THEY ARE USELESS” (I Corinthians 3:18-20 NASB).
Having said this much, we shouldn’t become so jaded, cynical or perhaps self-righteous to say that all politically correct ideas are bogus. Many may have virtue. The key, however, is to not blindly submit the intellect (and heart) to majority opinion while assessing politically correct ideas.
Add to this, report errors, suggest edits or voice your opinion by leaving a comment
Symbol
THE POWER OF LOVE: Material Boy / Aart van Bezooyen
Symbol
M. H. Abrams says that at the most fundamental level a symbol is anything that signifies something else.
Abrams also notes that a distinction is often made between the public and private symbol. The public symbol, such as the cross, is apparently understood by everyone in a given culture whereas the private symbol, such as an obscure poetic allusion, isn’t.
This distinction, however, seems open to debate: Surely not everyone in a given culture interprets the cross in the same way.
In literature a symbol is
a word or phrase that signifies an object or event which in turn signifies something, or suggests a range of reference, beyond itself (A Glossary of Literary Terms, 2005, p. 320).
In depth psychology, Carl Jung says the symbol is a meaningful image that mediates healing or destructive forces from the collective unconscious to ego consciousness–for example, the symbol of the Cross or Serpent.
Jung says symbols arise from the unknowable archetypes but are recognized as archetypal images. Archetypes interpenetrate among themselves; likewise, archetypal images are discrete but exhibit similarities. For Jung the flow of psychic energy between the collective unconscious and the symbol is a two-way process.
Jungian Erich Neumann says that the symbol acts as both as an “energy transformer” and as a “moulder of consciousness.” As an energy transformer the symbol facilitates the ego’s experience of the numinous, arising from the collective unconscious. As a moulder of consciousness, the symbol operates on the level of collective consciousness by contributing to the ideology of a given culture.
Jung says the interconnected conscious and unconscious aspects of humanity cannot be severed. He’s widely quoted as saying in The Undiscovered Self (1958):
You can take away a man’s gods, but only to give him others in return.
Likewise, political leaders of the mass state cannot avoid being glorified or demonized. This occurs through brute force, clever calculation and also through public fascination and projection.
Jung believes, for example, that a mass-produced placard image of Joseph Stalin expresses an archetypal force articulated on the conscious level that both sways and oppresses individuals.
Skyscrapers: swisscan / Reto Fetz
A more contemporary example would be the disempowering psychological effect that massive bank towers (symbolizing ‘Big Business’) have on the poor and disenfranchised. And in ancient cultures such as Greece, Rome and Egypt, impressive architecture apparently had a similar effect on slaves, the exploited, the underprivileged and on less powerful visitors from foreign cultures.
» Abyss, Agape, Alchemy, Anima, Animus, Atlantis, Censor, Cirlot (J. E.), Cylons, Dean (James), Death and Resurrection , Denotation, Dreams, Eden, Ego, Eleusinian Mysteries, Eucharist, Felix culpa, Geertz (Clifford James), Goddess vs. goddess, Hero, Individuation Process, Jonah, Kraken, Kundalini, Labyrinth, Language, Mandala, Mead (George Herbert), Miracles, Object, Psychoid, Pyramids, Square Cross, Sublimation, Theosophy, Totem, Transubstantiation, Tree of Life, World Tree
Add to this, report errors, suggest edits or voice your opinion
Vaisya Caste
Vaisya
One of the former Hindu castes, characterized by merchants and businessmen.
Members of the Vaisya caste are traditionally associated with karma-yoga, the yoga of action, although it should be noted that in contemporary India a businessperson does not necessarily attach religious significance to his or her work.
The Vaisya caste was generally ranked as the third of four, along with a 5th unofficial group of “outcastes.”
By way of contrast, the merchant class in medieval Japan under the powerful Tokugawa military rulers (1600-1867) was regarded as the lowest class, not the second-lowest or, depending on how one looks at it, third-lowest.
The whole notion of caste was deplored by Gandhi in the 1930s and criminalized in India during the 1950s. Its power over the minds of people has diminished although some arguably backward families still look to ‘appropriate’ caste marriages.
Old Indian Castes by rank
- Brahman caste (priests, thinkers)
- Kshatriya caste (rajas, warriors, persons of action)
- Vaisna caste (merchants)
- Sudra (menial laborers, servants)
- Unofficial group of Outcastes.
» Yoga, Karma-yoga
Add to this, report errors, suggest edits or voice your opinion by posting a comment
Weber, Max
Weber, Max (1864-1920) Pioneering German sociologist who suffered a mental collapse and is said to have recovered through rationality.
Along with Karl Marx and Emile Durkheim, Weber is usually regarded as one of the ‘big three’ in classical sociological theory.
We don’t know if Weber was fully aware of Marx but his notions of status and party extend Marxist analysis, which focussed on the idea of class, ownership and the means of production.
For Weber, social position rests not only on economic class but also on status (i.e. social prestige, such as a priest or judge) and party (i.e. political power).
Unlike Marx, whose theory was geared toward social transformation, Weber sought only to understand.
In studying the major world religions Weber made important contributions to the sociology of religion, particularly with regard to his development of ideal types, his work on charisma and the distinction made between ethical vs. exemplary prophets.
Because of the vast scope of Weber’s work on religion, and due to his reliance on translations of original texts, some scholars argue that he constructs a ‘grand theory’ based on sometimes misunderstood scriptures.
Regardless, Weber produced a recognized classic, The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, in which he argued that the Calvinist view of salvation fostered the development of Capitalism.
According to Weber, the Protestant ‘work ethic’ sanctioned hard worldly work and the reinvestment of profits as a fulfillment of religious duty.
The Protestant population could be simultaneously wealthy, religious and guiltless–an ethic already present among Jewish minorities throughout Europe.
Image Source:
» Caste, Class, Comte (August), Cylons, Ethical Prophet, Marx (Karl), Exemplary Prophet, Language, Party, Protestantism, Relations of Production, Scholarship, Sociology, Status
Add to this, report errors, suggest edits or voice your opinion by posting a comment
X-Men
X-Men
A fictional team of mutant superheroes with special abilities created by Marvel Comics writers Stan Lee and Jack Kirby.
The original comic series has been successfully translated into a film trilogy and an animated TV series.
There is also an American and Canadian science fiction television show called Mutant X that is based on the original Marvel comic strip.
The idea of X-Men compels us to remember that genetic mutation and recombination need not always be bad.
Society’s condemnation of the X-Men and their genetically enhanced abilities is unfounded, even paranoid, and might parallel present misunderstandings and tensions between those lying in the middle and at the extremes of the so-called normal bell curve.
Quite possibly some of today’s “freaks and geeks” represent a kind of precursor to the next stage of human evolution.
It has also been argued that X-Men is a symbolic protest against current forms of racism and discrimination that different religious, ethnic and status groups may hold toward one another. » Science Fiction
Add to this, report errors, suggest edits or voice your opinion by posting a comment
Zarathustra
Zarathustra (c.1200 BCE ?) was an ancient Persian prophet who fled his homeland because his teachings were controversial. He ended up in eastern Iran under the protection of King Vishtaspa who embraced his teachings.
Zarathustra’s dialogue with the Lord, Ahura Mazda, is recorded in the Holy Book The Avesta, a set of scriptures based on an oral tradition of roughly 1000 years.
The surviving scripture we have today is somewhat fragmentary, seemingly contradictory in places and only a part of the original.
Greek writers called Zarathusra Zoroaster.
Richard Strauss’ Also Sprach Zarathustra, used in the soundtrack for Stanley Kubrick’s film 2001: A Space Odyssey, was influenced by Friedrich Nietzsche’s philosphical work, Thus Spoke Zarathustra, which itself was influenced by the prophet. » 2001: A Space Odyssey, Avesta, Ahriman, Zoroastrianism
Image Credit:
- “Thus Spoke Zarathustra” by kian Elyassi Bakhtiari at http://flickr.com/photos/kian1/1390286041/ , Creative Commons License
Add to this, report errors, suggest edits or voice your opinion by posting a comment
