Word of the Day: Ideolatry

We're all familiar with the horribly elided term 'idolatry', from Greek eidolon (often translated 'graven image') and latreia (often translated 'worship' or 'service'). The original Greek was eidololatria, but I guess it had one 'lol' too many for the English, who chopped the word short.

However, the lesser-known word 'ideolatry' actually comes from a more basic concept — it comes from the Greek idea, or 'form', or (almost literally) 'imagining'. The Greek idea carries with it the sense of constructing a visual image in the mind's eye. To indulge in 'ideolatry' is to worship an idea, something that exists in the internal workings of one's mind as a virtual image.

In what way is ideolatry different from ideology, which is more familiar to most of us?

Ideology in general is the science of putting ideas into a rational system. An ideology is a construct of ideas, a conceptual framework or system incorporating ideas which may or may not have a rational basis. A consistent ideology (which is what ideologies are supposed to be but sometimes are not) is one in which all the incorporated ideas are linked by a consistent internal logic within the ideological system. Whether it is a rational ideology is a different matter.

In what way is ideolatry different from idolatry, which is more obvious to most of us?

Ideolatry is more subtle. Instead of worshipping Mammon, we worship a concept of finance, or the idea of money. Instead of sacrificing children to Moloch, we worship a concept of education, or the idea of drill-and-practice. Instead of venerating Ishtar, we worship a concept of fashion, or the idea of beauty contests. Instead of giving things up to Belial, we worship a concept of modernity, or the idea of reductionism. We give service to ideas, and they become our reasonable worship.

Sometimes, it takes the analysis of a less-used word to bring out ideas that we forget to think about. Sometimes, it is good to think about whether a set of ideas has become an ideology, and whether ideology has become ideolatry.

The Paradox of Elite Education on a Small Island (Part III)

Today some of us on Facebook were having a little discussion on how the Education minister on a small island was saying that one method of countering extremism (and hence terrorism) was to use students (presumably educated correctly) to counter extremist propaganda. That, of course, is what all states do in terms of national education. Small islands don't have a lien on that concept.

One person seemed to be asserting that you could teach people to comprehend, analyse and execute (presumably algorithms or procedures, not people) without using ideology or by imposing views through force or mandate. I don't think that assertion flies, because all forms of comprehension, analysis and execution contain intrinsic ideologies. One reason for reflective analysis is to know what those intrinsics are.

That said, it is obvious that if you are educating to produce elites, based on some concept of what 'elite' means to a small island, you must be providing different educational methods, modes, and/or materials. You can't produce an elite unless there is a quantitative or qualitative difference. If you prefer to just wait for things to float to the top, you must remember that both scum and cream will rise to the surface.

But once you couple the ideal of public education and equal rights of access to that education, you are just inviting people to develop the skills to game your selection process and turn themselves (or their descendants) into potential members of the elite. Then you may have selected not for highly-educated or qualitatively better people, but for those who can convince you that they are. You may get both scum and cream, and be unable to differentiate the two.

Why can't you differentiate the two? Because if the underlying ideology of your state is Machiavellian pragmatism, the people you think are cream might be people others think are scum. The two might really be two sides of the same silver pieces you have paid to Judas Iscariot.

See? There are perils in any undertaking, and none more so than when you move away from easily measured educational goals (e.g. ability to construct a mortise joint) and toward goals that are measured by what you can't really see (e.g. ability to appreciate the concept of political hegemony).

Warzone

It came to me over dinner tonight that there are, in particular, three kinds of people one finds in warzones which one ought to think of shooting. (A warzone is an area of lawlessness mixed with autocratic defeatism disguised as authority. You see them in places like Iraq and Lebanon.)

The three types are, in order of moral reprehensibility:

1. The Scavenger. This is a looter, a ghoul, a despoiler of what isn't locked up, tied down, chained together or possessed by an armed and alert owner. The scavenger is someone who realises that the environment is chaotic and makes use of the situation to hide just out of the corner of the authorities' collective eye, using his quasi-invisibility to find and appropriate that which belongs (or used to belong) to others. No respecter of property, he might make the ideal Marxist, except that even the Marxists would shoot him for taking that which he does not deserve.

2. The Profiteer. This is the misanthrope who enhances his position at the expense of the suffering of his fellow-men. Perhaps 'misanthrope' is the wrong word though, since he loves his fellow-men as a source of ready revenue. He hoards and calculates and helps others only when he can levy a tax which can bring significant gain. If there are people working under him, it isn't benign supervision they're getting, but a bootheel across the neck or a lash across their toiling backs. Some people would call him a Fascist. The Fascists might disagree - violently.

3. The Warmonger. This one is the chaosbringer, the stormcrow, the instigator of bloodletting. Unlike the other two, who benefit from the economics and sociology of the warzone, the warmonger is bent on increasing the size and intensity of the madness. Sometimes, this is deliberate; some warmongers are also profiteers - especially those of the military-industrial complex. Some are researchers looking to make their name by describing and formalising the nature of chaos. Some are politicians. All are Capitalists, some without realising it.

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Sometimes, warzones appear too close to home.

Ideology

what the old soothsayer said
julius ignored the fix was in
a long march that blossomed red
a storm of daggers thrust within

now here we are in winter
beware the ides of december
the gun assails the sprinter
two years past can you remember

we live and die by fractions
each half month brings its quota by
salary saving actions
salutary salvations sigh

the ballad too unsubtle here
a broken sonnet shall appear