Galen Fous MTP explores the divisive dehumanizing shadow of religious and political ideologies versus your personal humanity
As an Elder and activist with 6 plus decades of the human experience, I am clear that there can be no claim to love that excludes others. Love is all-inclusive, or it is nothing. From this vantage point, the most important issue humans face now, from local to global is for all human’s rights to be upheld. Anything less is playing dangerously small. Misguided, rage-driven, polarizing, ideological movements are escalating the rancorous divisions between humans on all fronts. The extremists of these fever-pitched political, religious, racial and gender fundamentalisms are becoming ever more shrill, demanding and righteously violent both emotionally and physically. They stir up and beget violence that draws more and more humans into violent counter reaction.
There is no question that many issues facing humanity are reaching a crisis level of danger. I would include here besides basic human survival for many, the need to establish fair opportunity, justice, sustainable economies and environments, and world peace as a short list.
“Hate – It has caused a lot of problems in this world and has not solved one yet.” Maya Angelou
|
Those who reduce these issues and relate extremely complex problems of human existence as being caused by only one side in the ideological equation – men versus women, liberal versus conservative, one religion or culture versus another, or any other form of fundamentalism, only perpetuate a violent, crisis driven world.
All ideologies are fundamentalist in nature. Their belief is correct, others wrong, or evil. Their immutable divinely ordained law, or superior intellectualized political belief is the only one true view. They over-simplify the broad spectrum of individual human behaviors and experience, into a black or white, good or evil, friend or enemy equation. Fundamentalists at the extreme edges will subtly or overtly hate and hope for, or cause the downfall or death of someone they define as the sworn enemy of their ideology. They will do so with a righteous shaming and/or brutality in the name of freedom, justice, liberation, or one god or another.
An ideology cannot exist with out the enemy. The enemy is defined in symbols that are dark, devious and dangerous, while the ideology unwaveringly possesses all the noblest of qualities. This reduces humans outside the ideology to impersonal symbols of disgusting or threatening qualities. Ideologies project this caricature of the “other” onto a full-fledged complex human being. It wants to strip away and ignore all that may be similar and shared between them. It leaves all negative qualities in the possession of the “other.”
“An eye for an eye only ends up making the whole world blind.” – Mahatma Gandhi
|
The rationale of any ideological extremist is not much beyond the level of the dumb rivalries between college or high school football fans. Fights, muggings and brawls break out as a matter of course by people who never met each other previously. Just their school colors, symbols of otherness on their attire, can bring up rage and belligerence.
In psychological terms this is called a projection – an unconscious disowning of your own, negative, feared or unresolved darker nature and projecting them onto someone else. Fundamentalists can only see the others shadow, and not their own. They take righteous possession of all the good values and trap the other in an impossible to escape, life-long web of their own projected shadow. This leaves the relationship between one and the other in a perpetual state of conflict and mistrust. Co-existence becomes a hard-line stalemate at best and all-out subjugation or annihilation at worst.
Dr. Timothy Leary put a deft, irreverent spin on this shadowy transaction during a public lecture I arranged back in the 1970’s. When asked a damned if I do/don’t question about sex and drugs from a fundamentalist christian heckler in the audience, Leary responded, “Look you guys play this card game with me over and over. You deal all the values of holiness, goodness, and sanctity for yourselves and leave me with sex, drugs and rock and roll…I’ll take that hand every time and raise you!”
Ideologies are righteous, intractable, divisive obstacles to basic human unity and human rights. They artificially divide humanity into us and them. They play on symbolic prejudices and fears to polarize the majorities of moderate people on both sides, who might otherwise find paths to negotiate and honor agreements that foster, peace tolerance and cooperation. Instead one sides’ righteous adherence to dogmatic, unchangeable vilifying fundamentalism creates an inevitable and opposite reaction from the designated “other”. Eventually, so much betrayal, mistrust, and rage has been accumulated that neither side will give the other an inch. Some of these conflicts are already thousands of years old. More and more ideologies are on the rise in this modern era with no end in sight.
“Peace cannot be achieved through violence, it can only be attained through understanding.” Albert Einstein
|
You can never graduate from being the other when facing an ideology you do not naturally belong to. Unless you offer total capitulation to the ideological superiority, you are not allowed any rights. If you do capitulate, then you get to be a second-class citizen of said ideology. There is nothing else you can personally do to be liberated further. How you have treated the ideological superior in the past , present or future makes no difference. You are a victim of the disease of otherness. By your nature you are hopelessly flawed and must be controlled or eliminated. Ideologies require victims to remain victims and perps to remain perps, and other to remain other.
Fundamentalists on both sides of a divide cannot see or own their shadows and projections onto each other. They are caught in a hopeless cycle of violent rhetoric or war. This is shadow meeting shadow. Two merciless predators at work, intent to dominate the other not resolve issues. Individuals wave their ideological banners proudly and defiantly and loose any sense of their individual humanity, their significant commonality with “other” humans.
We are immersed in a world where ideology fights ideology, blind to our common humanity. There is no intent to listen or acknowledge the others POV. No one in these realms of ideology practices Nonviolent Communication. They practice Violent Communication.
Ideology takes an important issue and divides into unresolvable, intangible parts, rather than encouraging the unification that is being called for. Neither side of an ideology allows room for the others view, nor allows facts to interfere with sensationalizing and putting a self-serving spin on any news story or event, or even the individual actions of other. There can be no meaningful discussion with an ideologist. Their one intent is to righteously preach the impersonal dogma of their ideology and dominate the narrative. The only resolution available under these contentious entrenched positions between opposing ideologies is either war or stalemate. When it comes down to militarized war, between two ideologies over the last hundred years, over 60% of deaths from the wars were unarmed, non-military civilians, so called-collateral damage. After enough carnage, one sides gives in. After considering the destruction of so many innocents, so many young soldiers destroyed, it would be clearly better if ideologies were limited to football to settle their differences. I would cheer such an evolution.
These opposing ideologies actually need and feed each other. The illusion is that the opposite ideology needs to be annihilated, but that would eliminate both. The truth is both sides of an ideological divide hold an important moral center that is lacking or incomplete without the other’s moral center. Each component offers something that is critical to the holistic survival of both sides and future generations. When it comes down to real world everyday issues of human rights, justice, peaceful co-existence, equitable opportunity, and preserving a workable world our children can inherit, I believe the great majority of humanity is already on the same page. My life-long experience and traveling to different cultures around the world has demonstrated to me that there is an emerging majority of humanity that are united as global citizens, in spirit at least.
The road blocks to reasonable, considerate, peaceful resolution of human issues are ideologies. All Ideologies or fundamentalisms or dogma driven POV’s should all be considered as psychological disorders, in my view. They are dysfunctional hold one back from embracing their full humanity, showing compassion and a deeper loving of self and other.
There is a macro and micro level to all this. The macro is much more complex and often out of our overall personal sphere of influence. The micro – the personal level is within everyone’s grasp and may ultimately be the best avenue to achieve some breakthroughs on the macro level.
“Each of us must learn to work not just for oneself, one’s own family or nation, but for the benefit of all humankind. Universal responsibility is the key to human survival. It is the best foundation for world peace.”Dalai Lama
|
Following a religious or political ideology is like having training wheels on your soul. The ideology is often used like a crutch, or a mask that replaces the difficult personal journey of examining and finding your own authentic identity and soulful passion. We are all so much more complex and glorious than any fundamentalism allows us. The requirement of a meaningful if not spiritual based life in my view, is that we learn to examine our psyches, and dig deep for our own truths, and spit out all the dogma we have been force fed.
The surest way to defeat the majority of your enemies and create more peace in the world is to take the projections back, off of them, and resolve that projected part of you through your own personal work. We will create more enemies than there are if we adhere to a narrow ideology. We will create allies when we expand our beliefs to be inclusive. This is an integral component of love.
There may be no escaping embracing an ideology. It is just how the human psyche operates. We are tribal. We seek a safe place to live, love, be welcomed, share experiences, raise our families, be in service. We seek a meaningful mythology within our communities and kinships that inspire our souls to express and achieve our highest good. These are rights and opportunities all humans deserve. To advocate for anything less in your chosen ideology is to doom the world to a perpetual marauding violence that only fattens bankers, arms dealers and the puppet tyrants they control, while the rest of us live in a terrorized, burned-up, hyper-militarized and violent world. Creating more peace in the world is an active process that must be built on the foundation of the aware Self, and recognition of the beautiful shared human experience.
Check out my previous articles here Is the Problem Sex/Porn Addiction or Sexual Dishonesty? and How to Welcome Your Male Sex Creature Or check out my website at GalenFous.com
Image Credit: Hands around globe
Galen, is this article not a representation of your own ideology? Just because it’s not guided by a massive political or religious movement onto it’s own right, doesn’t make it any less so. What enables you to hold beliefs and ideologies, that you suggest we follow you into, while you believe the ideologies of others are wrong? “Following a religious or political ideology is like having training wheels on your soul. The ideology is often used like a crutch, or a mask that replaces the difficult personal journey of examining and finding your own authentic identity and soulful passion.” So we… Read more »
I addressed your concerns in the article already…each finds their own way.
His article is simply out being a decent human being, and calling out people who judge others’ choices and belief systems. If that’s an ideology, I’m happy to be a member.
Wonderful well said article, from Galen Fous. I do my best having been an advocate for children, and alternatives th o sentencing. The prison system is a huge money making business and we are the leaders in a “free world.” Thanks Galen we need attention to peace and love. I remember Timothy Leary and Ram Dass, and W.Dyer.