Nihilism: Religious Ideology vs. Political Ideology.
11 February 2018 [link youtube]
Not just atheism, nihilism. This was recorded as a reply to a question from a Patreon supporter, you can join up (for one whole dollar) and have your questions answered here:
https://www.youtube.com/user/HeiJinZhengZhi/videos
Youtube Automatic Transcription
what is the difference between political
ideology and religious ideology my answer is really exactly the same as what I've just said about the definition of literature the definition of literature is anything that a publishing company decides to categorize as literature there is no intrinsic or essential or even meaningful line that separates literature from comedy a book may be sold in the comedy section of the bookstore for 50 years or 100 years and then at some point somebody somewhere decides to repackage the same book and sell it as fine literature there are other books that start off in the philosophy section and then get rebranded and sold in politics or economics and so on what these other people are doing is that when they perceive the world they see it in terms of labels that imperfectly respond to actual essential things or traits and they often become frustrated and angry at the imperfect relationship as they see it between the label and the real thing that they think is supposed to be described by the lately they have an ideal about what religion ought to be what politics are political ideology ought to be they may have an idea about what literature itself ought to be what that category ought to include or exclude they have an idealized category in their mind and then they struggle with themselves and they struggle with other people to try to make the real match up with the ideal they look at the world and see a series of masks and presume that each one of those masks fails to resemble a real face but the real face is one that they've never seen before one that doesn't have a name one that doesn't have an identity as a child I was really astounded when my father said to me that there was no difference between a plant and a weed it was just a question of our attitude when looking at something like a dandelion is this a plant or is it a weed these are labels that we apply and there is no underlying reality whether the plant is useful or noxious whether it's a plant you're actively farming because you'd like to make dandelion wine or you'd like to eat dandelion roots or prepare dandelion salad or visit plant your eradicating because you feel that the dandelions are ruining your rose bushes that is a matter of human perception only if you ask me what is the difference between religion and politics what is the difference between religious ideology and political ideology my answer is that these are labels that are neither more or less real than the labels that are used to categorize literature philosophy and comedy baddest yen it is always refreshing and is often instructive when you can talk about a really deep issue in a really shallow way this is a somewhat deep question that came to me from patreon supporter in response to my recent video that talked about the relationship between the ideal and the real in politics and political science the first time I articulated the point I'm gonna make in this video right now it was actually when I was working in Starbucks and about the year 1997 when I was employed at a Starbucks making coffee before I became vegan and I had a statistic that I believe I just read out of the newspaper it could have been out of a magazine or journal but it wasn't from some academic source and this statistic claimed at that time based on market research you were more likely to be HIV positive in the United States which is to say you were more likely to have the disease known as AIDS in the United States of America you were more likely to have HIV AIDS than you were to read literature and the people I told this at work they were blown away they were astounded of this and the first question they asked always was well how would you define literature and he just reiterated what was already in the first part of the claim this is based on market research so it's the size of the market for books that are marketed as literature that's what we're talking about here so the definition of literature is anything that the publishing companies categorize as literature right so the question that came to me here was of how do i define the term etiology and why do I or how do I dare why do I treat religion and political ideology in one category this way why do I talk about communism and Catholicism in the same terms under the same heading both as being ideologies and both as being ideologies that have killed millions of people all the way real right this is he thinks that tend to come up my channel now it's not with our reason it's not for no reason from my nihilistic perspective religious ideology and political ideologies are indeed very similar they have many of the same flaws mainly the same drawbacks many of the same dangers you could say they have many of the same organizing principles positively or neutrally in terms of how they organize people and spur them into action on an individual psychological level and also scaling up looking in society there are many many things that have in common but the person who sent me this question expressed that from his perspective of religion really was profoundly different from a mere political ideology that from his perspective something like Hinduism or Islam really belongs in a very different category from something like communism or socialism or what libertarianism I suppose we could throw another other political ideologies here well you know he may feel that way he's in tell to feel that way but if someone asked me sincerely what is the difference between political ideology and religious ideology my answer is really exactly the same as what I've just said about the definition of literature the definition of literature is anything that a publishing company decides to categorize as literature if they decide that this book can sell as literature if they decide to market it as literature then its literature and there's no point debating the application of the category we can debate whether it is good literature or bad literature we can debate whether it is great literature or trivial we can debate whether it is memorable or nominal we can debate of course whether or not the book is worth reading but there is no intrinsic or essential or even meaningful line that separates literature from comedy a book may be sold in the comedy section of the bookstore for 50 years or 100 years and then at some point somebody somewhere to say to repackage the same book and sell it as fine literature this has happened many times I'm sure it happened to Voltaire and a number of other famous authors nothing changed about the book nothing even really changed but the way the book is perceived or read in our society I would say and yet it's made this transition there are other books that were published under one heading or another and end up migrating into the philosophy section there are other books that start off in the philosophy section and then get rebranded and sold in politics or economics and so on ok this is actually a profound part of my life it comes up again and again all the time talking about politics and talking about personal life very serious experience what these other people are doing is that when they perceive the world they see it in terms of labels that imperfectly respond to actual essential things or traits and they often become frustrated and angry at the imperfect relationship as they see it between the label and the real thing that they think is supposed to be described by the label now they will always be frustrated because what they imagine is a real thing is in fact nothing it's an ideal they have an ideal about what religion ought to be what politics are political ideology ought to be they may have an idea about what literature itself ought to be what that category ought to include or exclude they have an idealized category in their mind and then they struggle with themselves and they struggle with other people to try to make the real match up with the ideal and I don't do that they look at the world and see a series of masks and presume that each one of those masks fails to resemble a real face but the real face is one that they've never seen before one that doesn't have a name one that doesn't have an identity one that isn't a person they could describe as beautiful or ugly familiar or unfamiliar the world for them becomes a Hall of Mirrors with these labels and masks and their constant sense of frustration and struggle with for example other students studying politics with them that the other students around them don't share their ideals don't share their beliefs in these ideologies and don't share their frustrations with these imperfections as to how the labels are applied to particular examples failing to represent what they think of as the reality of the thing and what I see as something quite unreal and misleading and even a little bit dangerous okay so yes this is something I mean it's deep and it's shallow at the same time or it's something deep that I can talk about in a shallow way if you ask me what is the difference between religion and politics what is the difference between religious ideology and political ideology my answer is that these are labels that are neither more or less real than the labels that are used to categorize literature philosophy and comedy in the bookstore or where they sell DVDs or CDs or any other media that these are label labels that shouldn't be believed in that shouldn't be seen to confer any kind of value there leave labels that are ultimately as meaningless as the numerical code assigned to the book by a librarian they're only there to help you find what it is you're looking for and as arbitrarily as those labels have been applied they can be rescinded they can be rewritten they can be changed and new labels applied again in the same way that have said before as a child I was really astounded when my father said to me quite a casual and shallow way that there was no difference between a plant and a weed it was just a question of our attitude when looking at something like a dandelion is this a plant or is it a weed these are labels that we apply and there is no underlying reality whether the plant is useful or noxious whether it's a plant you're actively farming because you'd like to make dandelion wine or you'd like to eat dandelion roots or prepare dandelion salad or if it's a plant you're eradicating because you feel that the dandelions are ruining your rose bushes that is a matter of human perception only and it's a subtle thing that so many people let this slip away from their finger tips and instead as I said before look at the world as this series of imperfect masks staring back at them I think when this person was writing to me I think that's what's going on for them they feel angry and frustrated that I don't share their belief in an intrinsic difference between religion and political ideology and that's correct I don't share that belief I don't share in any beliefs and for me all of these differences are extrinsic about us yen
ideology and religious ideology my answer is really exactly the same as what I've just said about the definition of literature the definition of literature is anything that a publishing company decides to categorize as literature there is no intrinsic or essential or even meaningful line that separates literature from comedy a book may be sold in the comedy section of the bookstore for 50 years or 100 years and then at some point somebody somewhere decides to repackage the same book and sell it as fine literature there are other books that start off in the philosophy section and then get rebranded and sold in politics or economics and so on what these other people are doing is that when they perceive the world they see it in terms of labels that imperfectly respond to actual essential things or traits and they often become frustrated and angry at the imperfect relationship as they see it between the label and the real thing that they think is supposed to be described by the lately they have an ideal about what religion ought to be what politics are political ideology ought to be they may have an idea about what literature itself ought to be what that category ought to include or exclude they have an idealized category in their mind and then they struggle with themselves and they struggle with other people to try to make the real match up with the ideal they look at the world and see a series of masks and presume that each one of those masks fails to resemble a real face but the real face is one that they've never seen before one that doesn't have a name one that doesn't have an identity as a child I was really astounded when my father said to me that there was no difference between a plant and a weed it was just a question of our attitude when looking at something like a dandelion is this a plant or is it a weed these are labels that we apply and there is no underlying reality whether the plant is useful or noxious whether it's a plant you're actively farming because you'd like to make dandelion wine or you'd like to eat dandelion roots or prepare dandelion salad or visit plant your eradicating because you feel that the dandelions are ruining your rose bushes that is a matter of human perception only if you ask me what is the difference between religion and politics what is the difference between religious ideology and political ideology my answer is that these are labels that are neither more or less real than the labels that are used to categorize literature philosophy and comedy baddest yen it is always refreshing and is often instructive when you can talk about a really deep issue in a really shallow way this is a somewhat deep question that came to me from patreon supporter in response to my recent video that talked about the relationship between the ideal and the real in politics and political science the first time I articulated the point I'm gonna make in this video right now it was actually when I was working in Starbucks and about the year 1997 when I was employed at a Starbucks making coffee before I became vegan and I had a statistic that I believe I just read out of the newspaper it could have been out of a magazine or journal but it wasn't from some academic source and this statistic claimed at that time based on market research you were more likely to be HIV positive in the United States which is to say you were more likely to have the disease known as AIDS in the United States of America you were more likely to have HIV AIDS than you were to read literature and the people I told this at work they were blown away they were astounded of this and the first question they asked always was well how would you define literature and he just reiterated what was already in the first part of the claim this is based on market research so it's the size of the market for books that are marketed as literature that's what we're talking about here so the definition of literature is anything that the publishing companies categorize as literature right so the question that came to me here was of how do i define the term etiology and why do I or how do I dare why do I treat religion and political ideology in one category this way why do I talk about communism and Catholicism in the same terms under the same heading both as being ideologies and both as being ideologies that have killed millions of people all the way real right this is he thinks that tend to come up my channel now it's not with our reason it's not for no reason from my nihilistic perspective religious ideology and political ideologies are indeed very similar they have many of the same flaws mainly the same drawbacks many of the same dangers you could say they have many of the same organizing principles positively or neutrally in terms of how they organize people and spur them into action on an individual psychological level and also scaling up looking in society there are many many things that have in common but the person who sent me this question expressed that from his perspective of religion really was profoundly different from a mere political ideology that from his perspective something like Hinduism or Islam really belongs in a very different category from something like communism or socialism or what libertarianism I suppose we could throw another other political ideologies here well you know he may feel that way he's in tell to feel that way but if someone asked me sincerely what is the difference between political ideology and religious ideology my answer is really exactly the same as what I've just said about the definition of literature the definition of literature is anything that a publishing company decides to categorize as literature if they decide that this book can sell as literature if they decide to market it as literature then its literature and there's no point debating the application of the category we can debate whether it is good literature or bad literature we can debate whether it is great literature or trivial we can debate whether it is memorable or nominal we can debate of course whether or not the book is worth reading but there is no intrinsic or essential or even meaningful line that separates literature from comedy a book may be sold in the comedy section of the bookstore for 50 years or 100 years and then at some point somebody somewhere to say to repackage the same book and sell it as fine literature this has happened many times I'm sure it happened to Voltaire and a number of other famous authors nothing changed about the book nothing even really changed but the way the book is perceived or read in our society I would say and yet it's made this transition there are other books that were published under one heading or another and end up migrating into the philosophy section there are other books that start off in the philosophy section and then get rebranded and sold in politics or economics and so on ok this is actually a profound part of my life it comes up again and again all the time talking about politics and talking about personal life very serious experience what these other people are doing is that when they perceive the world they see it in terms of labels that imperfectly respond to actual essential things or traits and they often become frustrated and angry at the imperfect relationship as they see it between the label and the real thing that they think is supposed to be described by the label now they will always be frustrated because what they imagine is a real thing is in fact nothing it's an ideal they have an ideal about what religion ought to be what politics are political ideology ought to be they may have an idea about what literature itself ought to be what that category ought to include or exclude they have an idealized category in their mind and then they struggle with themselves and they struggle with other people to try to make the real match up with the ideal and I don't do that they look at the world and see a series of masks and presume that each one of those masks fails to resemble a real face but the real face is one that they've never seen before one that doesn't have a name one that doesn't have an identity one that isn't a person they could describe as beautiful or ugly familiar or unfamiliar the world for them becomes a Hall of Mirrors with these labels and masks and their constant sense of frustration and struggle with for example other students studying politics with them that the other students around them don't share their ideals don't share their beliefs in these ideologies and don't share their frustrations with these imperfections as to how the labels are applied to particular examples failing to represent what they think of as the reality of the thing and what I see as something quite unreal and misleading and even a little bit dangerous okay so yes this is something I mean it's deep and it's shallow at the same time or it's something deep that I can talk about in a shallow way if you ask me what is the difference between religion and politics what is the difference between religious ideology and political ideology my answer is that these are labels that are neither more or less real than the labels that are used to categorize literature philosophy and comedy in the bookstore or where they sell DVDs or CDs or any other media that these are label labels that shouldn't be believed in that shouldn't be seen to confer any kind of value there leave labels that are ultimately as meaningless as the numerical code assigned to the book by a librarian they're only there to help you find what it is you're looking for and as arbitrarily as those labels have been applied they can be rescinded they can be rewritten they can be changed and new labels applied again in the same way that have said before as a child I was really astounded when my father said to me quite a casual and shallow way that there was no difference between a plant and a weed it was just a question of our attitude when looking at something like a dandelion is this a plant or is it a weed these are labels that we apply and there is no underlying reality whether the plant is useful or noxious whether it's a plant you're actively farming because you'd like to make dandelion wine or you'd like to eat dandelion roots or prepare dandelion salad or if it's a plant you're eradicating because you feel that the dandelions are ruining your rose bushes that is a matter of human perception only and it's a subtle thing that so many people let this slip away from their finger tips and instead as I said before look at the world as this series of imperfect masks staring back at them I think when this person was writing to me I think that's what's going on for them they feel angry and frustrated that I don't share their belief in an intrinsic difference between religion and political ideology and that's correct I don't share that belief I don't share in any beliefs and for me all of these differences are extrinsic about us yen