6 ms·
I think you just found out the roots of every religion.
by bl4ckm0r3 2y ago
I think you just found out the roots of every religion.
- mistermann 2y agoEvery ideology would be a more accurate story, though perhaps less satisfying.
- liquidpele 2y agoUh.. no?
- swatcoder 2y agoAn ideology can be seen as a collection of rituals in action, reasoning, and rhetoric situated among core beliefs about what life is, what the world is, and what's important to them. And each ideology has a specific history of events, founders, and later elaborators that shape what these rituals and beliefs are. Many ideologies reject deities or are at least ambivalent about them, but they're not really operationally different than religions. So for as much as little bits of history linger in relgious rituals, both blurred and resharpened in later years, the same is absolutely true for ideologies. The capitalism or feminism or humanism or atheism or whatever else you point to today is similar to the one sharing its name in the past, or in some other region, but is not the same, and these differences are all vestiges of little seed events that happened here or there.
- ajkjk 2y agoI don't think anybody else would describe an ideology as a collection of rituals.
- swatcoder 2y agoFWIW, that's incorrect. It's not at all unusual for ideology to get modeled and analyzed that way in sociology, anthropology, etc
- ajkjk 2y agoDo you have an example? It sounds like a complete category error. That or you're using the word very differently than most people do..? An adherent of an ideology might, like, have rituals. But the ideology isn't the rituals. Here are some ideologies off the top of my head: democracy, marxism, environmentalism, libertarianism, atheism, the moral basis of Christianity but not the religion itself, utitarianism, humanism, empiricism. None of those have, as far as I can tell, a single ritual inherently associated with them.
- swatcoder 2y agoIf you categorically define an ideology to be a system of pure concepts, independent of any practice of thought, speech, or action by a professed adherent, then you will inevitably see it as a category error, yes. (You'll also have a hard time enumerating those concepts in a complete and consistent way) But if you're even a wee bit of a subjectivist, as many (not all) social scientists and social philosphers are, then a definition like that isn't interesting or productive. From that perspective, ideologies are something that people profess adherence to and express statements about and behave in self-identified accordance to. They gather in elections, they discuss power through the lens of capital and labor, they recycle or avoid eating meat, they recoil at government overreach, they expose fraud in purported miralces, they pray, they trade trolley problem memes unironically, they protest against inequality, etc If these don't make sense to you as "rituals of ideologies" for people doing cross-cultural studies, that's fine, but then I have a sense that a lot of cross-cultural studies just feels like hogwash to you anyway. I doubt I could change your mind here. :)
- ajkjk 2y agoWell, you're right about that. I suppose I don't see the point in calling what you're describing an ideology. Just call it something else so ideology can mean what it means to everyone else..? I see all your examples as like, social behaviors that happen to presently align with the ideologies. But in the past or future they won't, while the ideologies will persist, cause they live in 'idea space'. (nor would I call any of those rituals, either, but I guess words don't mean what they normally mean in those fields)
- mistermann 2y agoI certainly would (not as a comprehensive explanation though of course). The range of forms of conceptualization any one individual is capable of (or not) is strongly influenced by the ideology to which they subscribe (or are captured by). If you simply consider how the human mind works, this "should" be fairly obvious. But one's ability or likelihood to think about such things is once again a function of the norms and accepted practices of one's ideology. That which is not known of, essentially does not exist.
- kstenerud 2y agoYup. The Epic of Gilgamesh (c. 18th century BC) caused quite a lot of controversy when it was translated in 1870 due to its striking similarity to many parts of the Hebrew Bible (which was written MUCH later). Similar controversies erupted over the stories of Osiris (c. 25th century BC). By the 10th century BC, almost all of the story themes that we ascribe to more modern authorship had already been written.
- InitialLastName 2y agoThe similarity between the EoG and Genesis flood stories can probably be laid to the fact that the first major human societies were built around flood plains of rivers in regions that have otherwise stable climates. When your society spends centuries in that situation, floods are the single most important natural event that happens to you. If would be shocking if they didn't feature prominently in your stories.
- giraffe_lady 2y agoThere are other similarities between the epic of gilgamesh and genesis beyond just the flood, it's a very interesting subject imo. Ultimately both were originally oral traditions long before they were written anywhere, both emerging out of the ancient east mediterranean/west asian cultural milieu. IIRC the current scholarly consensus is that the shared parts represent two surviving variants of an even earlier story that was widely told across cultures in that region.
- mqefjh 2y ago[dead]
- whatwhaaaaat 2y agoWhy do we think peoples of the past would be unable to distinguish between a normal river flooding and a “world ending” flood? What about the ~450 feet of sea level rise in the last 15k years?
- red-iron-pine 2y agoKing Arthur was probably an actual Welsh guy, who fought the Romans (and/or maybe Saxons). Few hundred years later they give him a magic sword and a round table. Same idea, but with other cultures, religions, etc.
- Aerbil313 2y agoNot at all. Islam can be verifiably traced back to a single source, and mainstream Islam belief today is the same as it was 1400 years ago.