Ideology Afflicted Planet

The twentieth century was dominated by a strange, ravaging…

Epidemic

It swept across the globe sparing no continent.
And from the 2nd decade of the century to the 2nd-last, like a whirring, well-oiled factory assembly-line…

K e p t    k i l l i n g    p e o p l e.

How many?
By conservative estimates 50 million. Could be as much as 100 million.

Unlike the black death of the 14th century which spread by rats, this red death of the 20th was spread by memes…
An ideology called…

Marxism/Communism

Everybody knows about this pestilence. Yet few analyse it correctly:

• They assume it was primarily in Russia — though its spread reached from S. America, China, Vietnam…
• Or even more narrowly they blame some specific leaders eg Stalin for being super-criminals, neglecting its vast sweep across peoples, nations, continents.
• More dangerously they associate this pandemic with this specific ideology or belief-system. This is both true and dangerously false.

Let us try a new look at this 100-year old problem:

• It is true that this ideology and its satellites justified murder on a hitherto unprecedented scale
• It is false and dangerous in suggesting that this specific ideology or belief-system is somehow solely culpable.
• In the respected hoary tradition of "remedy worse than disease," its antidotes — McCarthyism, Reaganomics, Thatcherism, CIAism — continue unabated today even though the red-death has ended

Theses

▣ Ideologies kill

Like contagious bacteria, memes can spread, taking over unsuspecting hapless individuals and thereby wiping out people in the mass

▣ It is impossible for human beings to be ideology-free

• If state-controlled markets are wrong, then free markets are good
• If social engineering is wrong, liberalism is right
• And if we dont believe in communism we believe in democracy

And never-mind that whereas state-driven communism only effected genocide, free-market sponsored liberal democracy is driving a planet-wide terracide.
In short, the havoc and destruction did not arise from THE ideology called Marxism but our propensity to put ideology-orientation over basic universal values.

▣ Another name for ideology is religion

Etymology of 'religion' is to bind
By false-promising ordinary people the heaven of freedom, communism destroyed millions.
And nobody noticed that communism was another new religion…
More destructive than the traditional

Of all religions, secular and otherwise, Marxism is by far the bloodiest — bloodier than the Catholic Inquisition, the various Catholic crusades, and the Thirty Years War between Catholics and Protestants
Rudolph Rummel

And as communism is a failed murderous religion so is democracy, liberalism, free-market…
Speaking about Sam Harris and Christopher Hitchens, Chomsky makes the statement that those Secularists are religious fanatics
And all these are based on the obviously falsifiable but dogmatically held credos of automatic progress, inexorably moving towards a heaven of world revolution and freedom.
In this context, towards getting to what is possible we need to identify the…

▣ Unaffordable luxuries

Atheist

To be religion-free — impossible if one is a human

Agnostic

Chomsky arguing Foucault, pointed out that absolute relativism, like perfect skepticism, is impossible. "I do now know" must be relative to some knowledge that I believe in

Religious

To follow someone's readymade religion, evidently the cause of much of today's problems

Ism-itis

Liberal-Democracy is the pre-eminent but not the only modern religion.
We also have… feminism, supremacism, patriotism, racism, (anti)semitism, socialism, terrorism, fascism, plagiarism, vegetarianism, highbrowism

For ism-itis maybe we need anti-ism-ism ? ¿ 😎

Non-religious

“O I am not interested in all this… Just want to get about my day-to-day life. May I have a coffee please??”
“Sorry mate! No more coffee is being served! We're done for the day!
Maybe youve been gawking so much at the ladies youve failed to notice: The ship is sinking. You should jump into a lifeboat… Or into the sea… Or wherever!”

So what option remains?
We now have no option but to be…

✓ Our own messiah, savior, buddha… Jack Dawson!

Either that or… Last rat owns the sinking ship!
And if

• Ideologies are terrifyingly destructive
• To be a human and to be free from ideology is impossible
• Either we have classic religions or modern religions which are worse, but religion we must have

What is the way out??
Perhaps… replacing an insistence on assertion/denial with the spirit of inquiry would help¿?
Some relevant…

Quotes

We are the legacy of 15 billion years of cosmic evolution. And now have a choice. We can enhance life and come to know the universe that made us.
Or we can squander our 15 billion years heritage in meaningless self-destruction.
Carl Sagan

The mind that is actively learning all the time is actually in a state of order.
J. Krishnamurti

And why the above is central to these 'global challenges' discussions

When you look at what is taking place in the world we begin to understand that there is no inner and outer process; there is only one unitary process, it is whole, total movement, the inner movement expressing itself as the outer and the outer reacting again to the inner.
To be able to look at this is all that is needed, because if we know how to look, then the whole thing becomes clear.
J. Krishnamurti

Question: How shall I stop wars? Save the planet?
Ramana Maharshi: Realize yourself. And see if the wars remain.

To understand this suffering, which is neither yours nor mine, which is not impersonal or abstract, but actual and which we all have, requires great deal of penetration, insight.
And the ending of this suffering will naturally bring about peace, not only within, but outside.
J. Krishnamurti

We must change our stance: Instead of defining our actions by our religion, we work to define our religion through our actions. A new perspective is needed, so that what becomes most salient is a human conscience, with our divine confidence being only a reaffirmation of the direction in which our moral compass is already pointing.
Tauseef Hussain
[13 year old muslim boy giving his personal account of 9-11 and the aftermath — the killing of this grandfather]