this post was submitted on 12 Jul 2024
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US Authoritarianism

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Hello, I am researching American crimes against humanity. . This space so far has been most strongly for memes, and that's fine.

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[–] [email protected] 23 points 4 months ago (1 children)

Hey Time Traveller, welcome to 2024!

Now I know back in the 19th, ideology was just a term to denote a set of ideas.

And that's cool and all. Viva la Renaissance!

But we kind of diverged from then and did some injustice to the etymology of the word. Now it's more like a synonym for dogma and it has negative connotations of irrationality and an unwillingness to examine arguments critically.

Hope you enjoy your time in the 21st century and wait until you hear about what we did with the word "Gay".

[–] [email protected] 4 points 4 months ago (1 children)

This is kinda true and of course oversimplified.

"Ideology" as a term was first popularized by, surprisingly, Napoleon, as a politically loaded set of ideas akin to a belief system.

Philosophers and economists worked the term over for refinement so that it built up quite a bit of nuance and academic controversy over the next century.

In common vernacular it trended towards simpler uses like a synonym for 'worldview' or 'dogma', but in scholars it's been fractured into contentious specifics.

Terry Eagleton's book Ideology is a good read as he's both a great explainer of historical thought and fairly practical, and he settled on 'a system of ideas and beliefs that allows the oppressed to participate in their own oppression,' which is fairly summarized and useful.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 4 months ago (1 children)

Yeah, but I hope you realize my comment was more intended to be a humorous take, building on the humour of the comment I replied on.

On reddit, I eventually got used to adding a /s to every mild joke.

Up until now, I was pleasantly surprised that it isn't needed on Lemmy.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 4 months ago

Yes lol except your comment was correct not sarcastic! Just wry on ham. I was addressing the correct part because not enough people know that stuff.