Mind Field

PART TWO

IDEAS THROUGH TIME: LOOKING BACKWARD AND FORWARD

VI. Correlations between Ideology and History

The nature of history has been much debated. Within the field of historiography, which deals with this subject, there are a variety of different approaches. My own understanding of the nature of history incorporates my views on the nature of the mind, and on the role of ideas in the operation of human consciousness and the motivation of human behavior.

A. Historical contexts help shape ideologies

The times we live in help shape our view of things–this seems clear enough. Besides being applicable to the conceptual frameworks of individuals, I believe that it also is true when it comes to those systems of thought which are shared by and communicated among members of larger or smaller groups of people; these articulated ideologies, manifested as they are through the thoughts and actions of individuals, then in turn help shape the times we live in, and the times that others will live in in the future.

The brief mention of a few examples will, I expect, make this evident:

The systems of concepts collectively known as “animism,”–in which spirits are believed to inhabit certain objects, animals and people–are thought to have been influential among a number of primitive hunter-gatherer societies. How particular animistic beliefs might have originated and developed may be a subject of debate and speculation, but I think that the fact that such views did arise among those engaged in this way of life is no mere coincidence. The life they knew furnished the raw material out of which their views of the world emerged, and the myths and rituals which eventually evolved helped to form the cultural environment in which these people lived, and helped to guide the activities they were to perform in the course of their everyday lives.

The practice of early agriculture is thought to have been associated with myths and rituals based upon the celestial realm. Members of the priesthood watched the sky and marked the movements of the constellations which portended the changes in the seasons, and often created detailed calenders; myths and rituals linked with these helped regulate, among other things, when the people were to plant and when they were to harvest. The sequence of events regarding the development of these types of food-producing skills and of the myths and rituals associated with their use may be lost in the mists of time, but I think it is reasonable to suppose that the experiences of the agricultural lifestyle helped furnish the raw material from which these beliefs and practices were formed.

The Industrial Revolution over the past couple of centuries or so has brought with it a number of new social relationships and cultural environments. Factory workers, managers, technicians, entrepreneurs–these and other classes of people have either come into being or have changed in numbers and character out of all proportion to what they were in centuries past; knowledge of and experience with an evolving set of industrial, technical and managerial processes, and contact with the various organs of mass-communication (first the print media, and then radio, TV and motion pictures, etc.), also sets apart the participants of this new era from those that came before.

Associated with the changes in the conditions of life brought about by the Industrial Revolution, both with respect to the workplace as well as for other aspects of the society at large, were new ways of thinking, ranging from laissez faire doctrines of capitalism to socialism and Marxism in the realm of political theory, various theories of city planning and administration, legal principles embodied in case and statute law involving new economic and social practices, and a myriad of other structures of thought. Though this is a vast area of study, the simple point I want to make here is that with the rise of new economic and social conditions and practices, new issues of concern to people made their appearance, and new concepts and systems of concepts came into being. All the mechanisms and causative relationships involved with all this have yet to be worked out, but I believe that it is safe to say that the new conditions and practices certainly influenced the development of these new structures of thought.

Any number of other examples could be cited: the role of the Second World War in the stimulation of scientific and technological advances; the genre of science fiction (itself influenced by scientific and technological advances) as a source for raw material used in the development of various UFO cults; the spread of the AIDS virus as a factor in the development and spread of beliefs about safe sex; and so on and so on.

B. Ideologies help shape historical events

History is not just the daily routines of ordinary people going about their everyday business. This is part of it, of course, but on the larger stage there are grand dramas being played out: Nations rise and fall; peoples appear, seemingly out of nowhere, and then vanish out of sight; societies are transformed out of all recognition; wars are begun, sometimes for no apparent reason, and then end as abruptly as they started; some nations prosper economically, while others endure chronic poverty or suffer through periods of acute crisis and dislocation.

There are many variables involved as to why things happen the way that they do, and I do not mean to oversimplify the complexity of the relevant factors or imply that all the causes can ever be known, but I do believe that much of the general sweep of events can be better understood in light of the role that systems of ideas play in the process.

A few examples will hopefully suffice to make this point:

In the 7th century A.D., a new religion emerged out of the Arabian peninsula. From its beginnings in and around the cities of Mecca and Medina, the followers of Islam managed, within 100 years of the death of Mohammed, to conquer an empire that extended from Spain to India. The reasons given for this astounding accomplishment by scholars of the period are many and varied, yet most would agree, I believe, that the zeal with which its adherents held to this faith–and the unity which this imparted to their efforts–was one of the principal causes of their triumph over the nations and peoples that stood in their way; and that the nature of the ideas which comprised this faith was a decisive factor in the creating and maintaining of this zeal.

Another example of the beliefs of a people affecting the course of events is that of the followers of Judaism. Even though they were conquered many times, repressed, dispersed from their ancient homeland, expelled from many nations, and killed by the millions, the fact that they maintained their identity and cohesion throughout the centuries as a people, while others subjected to far less persecution and dislocation vanished from world history, is a testament to the power of a system of beliefs to unite its followers in the face of hardship, and to motivate them to act in a way which makes a difference in the overall scheme of things.

That the specific ideas which make up the system–and not merely the tenacity with which such ideas are held–can be the most significant factor in the way events play out can be demonstrated by the examples of two ideologies of a more modern provenance: Nazism and communism. If the guiding principles of either of these ideologies had been a little bit different in one way or another, it is easy to see how history would have taken a far different turn.

The list of further examples one could cite of particular ideologies having an effect on the course of events is as large as the list of events themselves; history is literally full of them (at least to my way of thinking).

C. The role of the individual in the process

In History of Concepts relating to human thought we discussed St. Thomas Aquinas and his influnece from Aristotle, of whose works were translated from Greek into Latin.

It should be remembered that ideas and ideologies do not exist independently of individual minds, and that new concepts and systems of concepts are not spontaneously generated out of thin air. It is easy to conceptualize and to speak in terms of ideas and ideologies in the abstract, but while this may be convenient, it also carries with it the risk of leading one into simplistic and formulaic views of history. By keeping in mind the fact that all ideas exist only in the minds of actual thinking beings, and that these are never as simple as we like to imagine them as being, a more realistic view of history can, I believe, be maintained. It is also important to note that the thinking up or formulation of particular ideas or systems of ideas is rarely if ever the work of just one mind, but involves contributions and influences from a number of different sources.

D. Cognitive behaviorism

In the first part of this work I asserted my view that the mind somehow organizes the concepts we hold into discrete structures of thought, and that these structures serve as the foundations of our consciousness (speaking metaphorically, that is).

Whether or not this view of things has any merit remains to be seen, but if it does, it is only a small step further to assert that those aspects of human behavior governed by conscious choice can best be understood as correlates of the particular ways that people think, which are related in a fundamental way to the particular structures of thought that exist within their minds. In other words, we might say that people act the way they act because they think the way they think, and that the way they think can best be understood in terms of the frameworks of concepts they use to make sense of the world. Such a view of human behavior I would classify as a cognitive theory of behavior (or, for short, as cognitive behaviorism), since it relates the cognitive process directly to behavior. In the abstract, it is not necessary to subscribe to any particular theory of cognition in order to hold to a form of cognitive behaviorism, but without one in mind I don’t see how such a view of behavior would be of much practical use.

Exactly how someone’s way of thinking might motivate them to act, and what other factors–whether instinctual, unconscious, or whatever–might be involved, will have to be worked out in detail at some later date, but I believe that there is enough positive correlation between the evidence we have about how people think, and about what they do, to surmise that the cognitive process is wrapped up in an integral way with conscious decision-making, and that the understanding of one is tantamount to the understanding of the other.