9/18/05
What comes first? Ideology or practice? The material world and its economics, or the cultural world of art and ideas? Calvinism or Capitalism? Is Weber or Marx correct? These questions are fundamental driving questions in the disciplines of Economics, Philosophy, and History; and each discipline comes up with different answers to these questions. Economics is the study of material markets, through a lens of quantification/calculation; the ideology of Economics, based on the material realities of society, in turn influences ideas and practice of public policy. In other words, reality gives base to ideology, and ideology in turn influences reality. Likewise, Philosophy observes nature and human truths and proposes systems for understanding these truths; these philosophical systems then influence the way people interpret and experience their realities. Ideology and practice come together and play upon one another; it is never one way or the other, one independent and one dependent variable, but a series of actions and interactions building upon each other in recursion.
What came first: the ideology of feminism or the practice of feminism? Who are the ideological leaders of my day? Who are the “ruling classes” that control my perception and interpretation of reality, and who are their opponents? Am I free, or are there forces constantly controlling what I think and say? Is knowledge free and objective? Or influenced by politics, or the CEOs of Fortune 500 companies? Or the media? Or this educational system with its debt sentences? The Great Names inscribed upon the walls of Butler Library, the self-selective Western canon? Who holds power over my mind’s methodology? What are the most active agents shaping my perceptions?
More importantly, where do the biases lie in my perception? What am I taking for granted as Truth at this point in time? In class, Professor Burgstaller said about geneology as a practice of writing history: “People take the truths and practices of the present for granted. They think history is useless and doesn’t concern us. But it’s important to understand where our present truths and practices come from.” It’s important for me to understand how my ideas of reality came about.
Capitalism, for one, is a huge ideology I take for granted. As an American, I rarely question the foundational principle and justification of capitalism: that people act primarily upon self-interest. In reading about Medieval Europe and the all-consuming influence of religion at that time, which allowed people to put spiritual salvation above corporal satisfaction and induced people to endure the status quo, I begin to question the strength and absoluteness of worldly self-interest. Is greed truly a base human instinct? Professor Burgstaller highlighted one passage in Tawney, that human beings and societies choose what parts of the human composition and experience to highlight: that which is closer to animals or that which transcends the base animal instincts. Can people choose to transcend the instinct of greed? That is the question Marx and Engels raised through Communism, I suppose; and the experiment of Communism failed. Why? Is there something unrealistic or un-economical about Communism; is it un-human?
Professor Burgstaller puts a high premium on language. “Language is what makes us essentially human,” he said, “chimpanzees can’t engage in trade.” Language is essential. I had a discussion with my friend Brian today about this. He said, “What distinguishes human beings from other animals and what makes human language unique is our ability to express mysticism; to express in real terms the unreal.” Religion is uniquely human. Abstraction is uniquely human. Poetry, symbolism, and the practice of metaphors are uniquely human. Milan Kundera wrote in The Unbearable Lightness of Being, “A single metaphor can give birth to love.” Love is uniquely human.
Money, an abstraction, is also uniquely human. “The Economy” is a human idea; it is not a material thing, an invisible hand, but also a series of abstract interpretations and calculations, and a disciplinary lens for understanding social phenomena that becomes taken for granted. Economics, the social sciences, even the natural sciences, could all really be part of the Humanities department, as it is Language that gives transferable meaning to the human experience. The scriptures, the language behind religion, are incredibly powerful, and has shaped humanity for thousands of years, before a relatively recent crisis of scientific disbelief, which leaves our current world in a state of moral/behavioral/social contractual instability (a good state, I would say, because it can be an opportunity for creativity). The idea that Protestantism, especially Calvinism, through such principles as Predestination and Calling, could engender such a huge transformation in a society’s motivation for life is astounding! I’m not sure I completely buy into Weber’s argument, but I do think he makes a good point, in critiquing Marx’s strict historical materialism. I think ideas and language really do make a huge difference. It is not only material conditions and motivations that creates ideology, but on an individual-to-individual level, it is an undeniable fact that human ideology can also create realities, which is what is truly intriguing about human beings.
I hope I never get lost in the abstraction of money, as I chase after the roots of its significance: human value, human exchange. I hope I never get lost in ideology as I chase after its goals in practice, or allow my practice to betray my core principles. I want to be an experimenter in these creative times, using both ideology and practice to question the way things are, and open up new entry points for being. I am dedicated to understanding and playing with the assumed “Truths” in the mental frameworks that shield us from deeper engagement with life – I am not sure yet what that means. I am dedicated to honoring creativity and ingenuity, and finding the limits of our humanity, by living as humanly as I can.