If we promote the ideas themselves, instead of promoting the organization who espouses the ideas, then we communicate better with others and find freedom outside pre-made ideological boxes.
Don't just accept ideas you disagree with as part of a "group-package" ideology, just because your team says you have to. Evaluate every idea on its own merit, and society will be better off for it.
Divide & Conquer is a lot harder to pull off on us if we all just see ourselves as humans evaluating ideas, instead of nation A vs nation B, or religion A vs religion B, or political party A vs party B. Don't identify with any ideology. Just identify with ideas. Then divide and conquer becomes like herding cats, it's impossible. And we are more true to ourselves and evaluate reality more clearly.
IMO it's an obvious choice to wean yourself off of ideological group-think, and instead be your own unique constellation of ideas, without needing a label for what that is. This is freedom.
Of course, it's okay to support a team if they line up with your ideas. However it is not good to support ideas just because you support a team with those ideas. This is putting the cart before the horse. Yet it seems to be what 75% of people do, because our culture reinforces the importance of belonging to groups and teams as more important than ideas, than the subtle truth. Use your ideas first to guide you, then the ideologies and groups you belong to as secondary. Otherwise, you are just being controlled and used by those groups and are not truly a free and independent being.
greycloud ago
i agree with this. although i would like to point out that a lot of philosophies are based upon a single simple idea. some groups are labeled by an idea they have that applies in all (or most) situations. for instance i am an old fashioned liberal. the term liberal means i stand for freedom. my idea is that autonomy is very important and that it exists in a spectrum from true liberty (you can do whatever it is you can do, a state of anarchy that is bad for social order), to complete slavery with an absence of choices at all (totalitarianism). in my liberal perspective, it is always better to be more free, but freedom must be traded off for social order. in order for a law to have legitimacy the freedom it gives up must be "worth" the security and improvements of life it gives (it must be a net benefit). if it is net neutral than freedom is preferable to order and security.
so it is an idea, but an idea ends up creating an ideology. as such i get along with other people who are liberal minded. having the title liberal is useful to help find other people with a similar mindset.
you will notice that the media and government have a vested interest in changing the public perception of names of ideologies (look at feminism in the 1980's and compare it to now, and you will see they actually oppose each other). the word liberal has been conflated with progressive. this causes people to attack "liberals" and so there is a public disagreement over what the term "liberal" or "feminist" really means. the powers that be use this redefinition of words to prevent like minded people from gathering together to create political power.
divide and conquer, control the people by controlling thoughts, control thoughts by controlling words. those with the power to shape language have the power to shape the world.
pitenius ago
What does an individual care for "social order"? Why should a minority support "social order"? Why would "the 99%" defend "social order"?
"Social order" isn't an idea; it's a control mechanism.
greycloud ago
i'm saying things like the following are illegal, which most people would agree on: murder, theft, assault. most people will agree to abide by these rules so long as everyone else does. that agreement creates social order. the anarchist principal of non-aggression is creating social order (and still is a law of sorts). there is more liberty in not having to defend yourself from murder attempts than from having the ability to murder people with no repercussion. this is how social order is a gain on liberty.
pitenius ago
you won't stop murders; you just raise the social costs
not sure i believe in non-aggression, either
greycloud ago
true. i question non-aggression as well. i would support it in anarcho syndicalism, but i oppose it in anarcho capitalism. i heavily prefer the socialist over the capitalist route. we have a long way to go before such systems could be reasonably expected to work while creating a peaceful world at the same time, even if that peace is reached through war. i tend towards non-intervention polices and am very anti-authoritarian. there is a line to be drawn somewhere for self defense (no you can't put those nukes on the border on your land, if you try i will preemptively kill you).
Dysnomia ago
Lol. Liberal does not stand for freedom. Liberal, imo, stands for progressive statism- engaging the state to achieve progressive change (often to the detriments of peoples' freedoms.)
From the internet:
Yup. It checks out.
You should really read some anarchism before subscribing to the circlejerk that it's synonymous with chaos and detrimental to social order. Anarchism is literally the political ideology most concerned with creating a world where all people are free to enact their will. "No rulers" is the literal translation of the word.
Be wary of these words you use, because they seem to have you confused about the results that government has in increasing social order (it means less freedoms, not more.)
Being a liberal is to cling to false promises that our government is representative of the people, and if you can get the people to elect good representatives we'll have good government. Oh how sad and how untrue that thought is.
greycloud ago
sadly, i agree with you here. it is very disheartening for me.