The unlearned human lives in a natural state of fiction. Without experience or understanding, everything is explained by imaginative story. Fiction. Until and unless the unlearned human gains experience and contemplates their experiences to form understandings, learning never occurs, and all things remain explained by imaginative stories. Fiction culture reigns as God in the lives of those who do not learn. Like academia.
The word for this is ideology. And guess what? Ideology is bullshit. (Yeah, who saw that coming?)
The ego, life’s BIOS (Basic Input Output System), locks onto things that call it God, and have it feel strong and secure. Ego hatefully rejects anything that doesn’t call it God and have it feel strong and secure. Our imaginative stories/fiction cultures/ideologies exist to worship our ego as God, and keep us feeling strong and secure. That’s why we make up the stories that we do. Superheros. Except none of it is true. None of it works. None of it is sustainable. Ideology only thrives as a fiction in our minds.
Reality is what it is, regardless of what we think it is, or want it to be. Reality is uh, real. Reality is perfect. Reality is what works—success and failure actually occur, in reality, not ideology.
So the key to happy living is to LEARN. To do things, see what happens, reflect on how well you actually did, and strive to do better. None of which involve ideology. Learning requires a willingness to make “mistakes,” accept them, and learn from them. But mistakes are not accepted by ego and ideology. Only blame. Ideology is an obstacle to learning.
Americanism is empathically non-ideological. Americanism, as I define it, is singularly loyal to simple competence. And simple competence isn’t ideological. Simple competence is experienced with and mindful of reality, with objectives and the learned means of obtaining those objectives.
The closest Americanism, as I define it, gets to anything resembling ideology are in its held values, which are spiritual, not ideological. Spiritual, as I define it, means beyond our ability to see and understand. Yeah, that sounds like ideology, except we keep it spiritual, we don’t make up imaginative stories to explain what we cannot see and understand. We accept the unseen, unfathomable, with faith in God, not ourselves. (Faith is not the same as belief. Belief is certainty. Faith is uncertainty.)
Because Americanism doesn’t feed our egos delusional Godhood and confidence, most people never venture into being one, or into learning, except perhaps a very few things. Most people hold fast to their ideologies for security and self esteem. These folks serve the demands of their egos, rather than explore and fulfill the possibilities of their lives. They never “boot;” they stay within the limits of BIOS, their ego. So sad. By “boot” I mean like a computer that turns on, and eventually runs.
Ideology is Insanity
A mentor of mine, Fr. John Hardon, SJ, used to teach that at least 85% of society is clinically insane. Young at the time, and somewhat insane myself, I thought that he was wrong. Now, given what I’ve come to understand, I think he was a bit low in his estimation. Sounds crazy, huh? Well, it helps to define insanity. I define insanity as thinking you are not crazy. I define sanity as knowing that you are crazy.
Crazy? Yes. We are neurobiological compute beings. Our brains are a mass of networked neurons, programmed by empirical sensory input, and cognitive processing. Everything we “know” amounts to memories and an interpretation of those memories. And as human beings with lingual faculties, we also code much of this into syllables and glyphs of language. Language is an abstraction of memory and cognitive conclusion, into a protocol of meaning, only as good as any other persons ability to process that lingual protocol. Pile onto this, our emotions, and that’s what we are, crazy.
Nothing in language is real, meaning language is not reality. Most people treat language as real. Our understanding of things falls inside our biological limits to see and understand. Extreme limits. We wild ass guess stuff all the time, and we’re afraid of everything. Crazy.
Getting back to ego though, the BIOS of all of this, we delude ourselves into assuming Godhood and superhero powers and “importance.” Crazy.
So sanity is knowing that you’re crazy; insanity is thinking that you’re not. Sanity is rooted in spiritual living. Insanity is ego driven. Ideology takes itself as real, and authoritative. Ideology is dogmatic. Ideology does not know that it is crazy; it serves ego’s need to be God and a superhero. Ideology is insanity.
Ideology also shuts down learning, because when there are no more questions, there are no other answers. Mind you, the answers of ideology don’t work, but that’s what blaming is for. And every war ever.
Knowledge versus Experience and Understanding
Knowledge is an emotion, not experience and understanding. Knowledge allies itself with ego, creating expectations. Expectations that when not met, generate ego rage and anger. Someone cheated us out of our entitlements!
Knowledge is the emotion of religion. Knowledge is a religious experience. Certainty, confidence, authoritative, “got this.” But its none of those things really, just the delusion of those things actually. Knowledge isn’t experience and understanding, and it does not guarantee outcomes.
Experience and understanding are sensibly subject to correction, so long as one isn’t ego driven. Experience and understanding are grounded with the first lesson of living: that most of reality is beyond our ability to see and understand, but present and reliable just the same.
Experience and understanding also fall outside the extreme constricted limits of language. Sentiments (love), instincts, art and music. These are outside of language, and parts of reality not containable in syllable or glyph. Smells are a memory, not lingual.
Okay, so what? Hmh. Glad you asked.
Because ideology isn’t real, it isn’t competent. Ideology has to have agreement with its false assertions in order to EVEN exist. When people put their security and self esteem into their ideologies, those people require you to agree with their culture of fiction. Their bullshit. If you don’t they will war on you until you do. That’s why ideologies ruin people’s ability to defend themselves. They tyrannize people into supporting the false assertions of their ideology, which requires force, the persuasion of murder.
That’s so what.
Ideological folks tend not to learn better along the way. They are religiously devoted to their own bullshit. Remember, knowledge is the emotion of religion, and that emotion gives their ego “Godhood expectations” regarding the rest of the world. When reality shows up and has ego go fuck itself, ego goes to ideological war with reality, brandishing its ideology as something real, which it is not. “Why the audacious indignity of it all!“ Psshhh…
Those willing and able to learn, have learned by way of experience and reflection, that we are not entitled to our expected outcomes, only that things happen when we do things. And we adjust accordingly. Don’t forget, reality is mostly beyond our ability to see and understand, but present and reliable just the same.
Americanism isn’t ideological. It is based on reality. Americanism as I define it. All ideologies are insane, because of the presupposition that they are real, which they are not. That’s crazy, and that crazy is denied, thus insane.
I ardently encourage you to dismiss ideological claims, and those who follow them. That means you need to dismiss most everybody and everything, because all of those things are pretty much bullshit. “Expertise.” “Law.” “Religion.” “Political Parties.” “Media/News.” “Education.” “History.” Even “Heritage” to a large extent. Ideologies are broken on delivery. Liars lie about lying, and manipulate to support for those lies. Dismiss them all.
Reality is what it is, regardless of what we think it is, or want it to be. We don’t make reality, we live in it. Anything that separates us from reality hurts us. When we choose to do this to ourselves, we then turn and hurt others. Willful incompetence is the essence of evil. That’s very un-American.
The power is in not knowing, because that’s what’s true. We find out along the way, always learning, loyal to simple competence.
Be American, and together, we’ll establish America. More to come.
David Weeks, Information Developer, Tampa, Florida. God love us.