charles brough
Member
They serve an evolutionary function.
We are evolved beings, and as such we function in a lean-mean way. That is, there is an evolutionary economy in our anatomy, physiology, social nature and way of thinking. It is all geared to survival and continued growth (in numbers). All that still lingers in us that is no longer needed has shrunk to insignificance.
And we don't believe in ideologies for any other reason other than that they serve a function---like most everything else. We invented all of them for our own use, and as far as we know, we have depended upon them since we developed language and speech to a level that made it possible more than fifty-thousand years ago.
Karl Marx said that "religion" (old ideology) is "the opiate of the people" as if it was an addiction. Is it? What is essential to being an addiction is having to get ever more of it inorder to achieve the same reward. Ideologies don't do that; even the old ones (the so-called "religions"). When they get too old and hence obsolete, they are eventually replaced.
So, what is the function of both old and new ideologies?
We are evolved beings, and as such we function in a lean-mean way. That is, there is an evolutionary economy in our anatomy, physiology, social nature and way of thinking. It is all geared to survival and continued growth (in numbers). All that still lingers in us that is no longer needed has shrunk to insignificance.
And we don't believe in ideologies for any other reason other than that they serve a function---like most everything else. We invented all of them for our own use, and as far as we know, we have depended upon them since we developed language and speech to a level that made it possible more than fifty-thousand years ago.
Karl Marx said that "religion" (old ideology) is "the opiate of the people" as if it was an addiction. Is it? What is essential to being an addiction is having to get ever more of it inorder to achieve the same reward. Ideologies don't do that; even the old ones (the so-called "religions"). When they get too old and hence obsolete, they are eventually replaced.
So, what is the function of both old and new ideologies?