Reply To: The special case of islam?

If, outside of religion or politics, there’s nothing certain to cling onto or get hold of, it’s not surprising that people turn to those things, and if we add in group identity/groupthink, we’ve got problems, even before the crazy narcissists start exploiting the situation for the purposes of power play and abuse.

“religion or politics”

– what these all share in common is ideology – some kind of theoretical construction to explain how the world works, and therefore, how we should act.  That’s great, except that without exception, they all suck pigs’ ass.  I can’t name a single one that does the world any good.  The ones that do best are the “loose” ones, and in this category I would put things like “liberalism”, “conservatism” and “secular humanism”.  In other words, they’re barely ideologies, just a kind of general world view.  The difference with secular humanism is that it has very well defined basic principles compared with the other two.  The other kind that does well is the Jesus/Sufi brand of religion, which again, is completely simple and back-to-basics, and again, there’s hardly anything to it.

What the very dangerous or misguided ideologies seem to share in common is:

• they’re so complicated that people stop understanding them properly
• they’re rigid
• the prescription is detailed and all-encompassing
• the actual knowledge is incomplete and unsatisfactory
• they have this quality of having been made up off the top of someone’s head – they just seem fanciful, and disconnected from real life.

The problem with this approach is that humans are in no way clever enough to invent a theoretical system of how the world is and, therefore, how we should behave.

However, we need a theoretical system of how the world is, and therefore, how we should behave.

The solution is to discover it through science and logic, instead of just pulling it out of one’s arse and believing our own shit because it smells so good.  Because this involves only observing the facts as they are, and from that, discovering the ethical normative aspects of that factual situation – it fits in with human nature as it is, so, the way it would cause us to behave is not alien or perverse.  On the contrary, it would lead us to sensibly make the best of things for the long term benefit of each individual.