• TheGIGAcapitalist@lemmy.worldEnglish
    583·
    2 years ago

    "“If [transgenderism] is false, then for the good of society, transgenderism must be eradicated from public life entirely – the whole preposterous ideology,” he said. "

    Mr Knowles has said in the past that his rhetoric isn’t genocidal because he doesn’t believe trans people exist, Jezebel noted.

    “There can’t be a genocide,” he said on his programme last week, adding that “it’s not a legitimate category of being. They’re labouring under a delusion. And so we need to correct that delusion”.

    The exact same thing could be said for the ‘my sky fairy is the true real one’ ideologies. Monotheism is a brain disease.

      • Enkrod@feddit.deEnglish
        11·
        2 years ago

        Belief(*) in and of itself is detrimental to a persons perception of reality. It doesn’t matter if it’s Christianity, some other monotheism, budhism, the belief in Karma, rebirth, homeopathy, essential oils, nationalism, political tribalism or flat earth.

        All these things exist as memes, as mind-viruses that can be transmitted and change, they are subject to evolution (survival of the most convincing/rememberable) and to competition. They all have another thing in common: they weaken your immune system (your critical thinking skills) and make you more susceptible to other infections.

        (*)Belief: The state of being convinced of something that has been proven not to be in accordance to objective reality.

        • ResonosityEnglish
          1·
          2 years ago

          In college I was taught that a belief = a good reason:

          Good as in the traditional Greek sense that the end is either the truth or the flourishing of people, including any instruments that serve as a means to those ends;

          Reason as in a cause originating in the mind that influences action or behavior.

          So if you had a belief of something, you had a good reason to do something. Believing is good reasoning.

          Obviously, you can easily devolve into moral relativism here, so I think the Aristotelian school can ground us again, favoring perception, deduction, and induction to get at “objective” reality, like you say.

          The issue is when pundits and rhetoricians hijack these projects by basing them on religion or political party, using language and pseudo-logic that can appear as trustworthy to those easily convinced.

          I like your description of ideas though. This sort of concept has been jostling around in my head for a few months. Appreciate the illustration!

      • banneryear1868@lemmy.worldEnglish
        2·
        2 years ago

        The concept of civil/civic religion is I think what you’re referring to there.

        But yeah I think the idea of religion as this negative external influence doesn’t address how it functions as a social system, like it doesn’t explain very much.

          • banneryear1868@lemmy.worldEnglish
            1·
            2 years ago

            It’s just that this knowledge/faith dichotomy isn’t something that exists in our cognition, its an analytical framework to categorize, but in real life our minds don’t operate like this. What’s happening with both “knowledge” and “faith” beliefs in practice insofar as they impact human behavior isn’t that different. “Faith” as religions define it is basically a social behavior that has a rational basis, ie “knowledge” can rationally describe why people practice “faith.” The Marxian understanding of it is directly rooted to material conditions as well, as in the character faith embodies is contingent on material conditions.

            A belief we could conceptualize as a civil religious one might be something like the “sovereign individual,” and we could look at the Declaration of Independence as a foundational religious text.

    • agent_flounder@lemmy.worldEnglish
      11·
      2 years ago

      Just wanted to point out that gender dysphoria isn’t an ideology, it is a recognized condition and its treatment is the current state of medical practice.

      Saying “transgenderism is an ideology” is as nonsensical as saying “depressionism is an ideology”.

      But right wing folks like to spout any nonsense so long as it seems to support their hatred and hurt the target thereof.

      I think religious belief qualifies as ideology and I would argue that the abrahamic religions have been shown to lend themselves to regressive, hateful thinking time and again.

      I personally think religion is simply an artifact, maybe even a side effect, of our evolutionary adaptations. One that is not too well adapted to life following the neolithic era and especially poorly suited to modern global existence.

  • BeautifulMind ♾️@lemmy.worldEnglish
    14·
    2 years ago

    If [transgenderism] is false

    The way these self-confident charlatans talk, you’d think they believe every thing they don’t like must be its own ideology, complete with ivory-tower academics dispensing it from a great height.

    I’m seeing a bit of this kind of referential language elsewhere too, decrying such bugbears as ‘evolutionism’ and ‘abortionism’- which, when you think about it, seems contrived to give people who read the title and don’t read content the impression that there are whole fields of study, replete with cult followings, devoted to these things.

    Rhetoric of this kind has a way of getting people to file away contingent-possible notions (that is, it might or might not be a thing but I don’t have time to understand it now so I’m filing a placeholder in my head for later) Having those things filed away in your head has a way of putting you on the fence about whether they’re true or real or not (they’re neither true nor false, just contingent)- and when you’re on the fence, partisanship can readily decide the matter without having to supply any evidence.

    The purpose of rhetoric like this is not to inform, but to flood its audience with contingent-possible bullshit, to exhaust their critical capacity and render them receptive to even the most counterfactual nonsense you can contrive.

  • Mango@lemmy.worldEnglish
    1·
    2 years ago

    I believe that what’s being taught as history is actually pro establishment rhetoric with stances baked in to convince everyone that effective opposition is “mistakes that never worked before”.