Is the true essence of ideology the dominance of principal over feeling?
I want to believe that principal can have feeling as well. What does a principle really mean if it does not have feeling? Are feelings so inadequate that they can not defend a principle? Are there not different types of feeling? I think I can believe in a principle and yet part of the reason I believe in it is from a deep-rooted feeling connected to it. Yet, maybe this is ideology: that principles must dominate feeling. I see in this the conflict of between the idealist and the realist- let's say that a person want a revolution. While this person may ideally want his/her revolution to be non-violent, the economic and social conditions are so bad and the government so oppressive that the revolutionist believes violence is the only solution. in other words, ideally s/he wants a peaceful revolution because s/he does not want people to be hurt (especially his/her own people) but realistically, there is no other way than violence.
i do not like this situation and it's because i do not like the principle behind it. i do not like the principle that violence can bring about effective and positive change. do violent means really bring peaceful ends?
i would side with Martin Luther King, Jr.-he brought about a revolution with non-violence. is he an ideologue? perhaps in a different sense. or, perhaps he was and the director (or Lenin) was just wrong: i would never call MLK's Love a feeling, that kind of Love, the kind of Love he believed in was a principle. But in fact it did dominate feeling-who could have rotten eggs thrown in their face and not feel like punching the thrower? the feeling of the civil rights activists certainly had to be dominated by their principle. their feeling (instinct) was violence, their principle was love. what was Lenin's principle? he believed it was necessary to smash heads...perhaps his fault lies in mistaking what Music made him feel as "feeling." maybe what Music made him "feel" was in fact, a principle.
2 comments:
music making us feel principle is a pretty profound statment.
hm..i'll have to think on that one. do you think that principle can come automatically, or is it always generated by feeling.
what about principles? we follow but we don't necessarily know?
read Mandela's Long Walk to Freedom if you haven't already. His decision for the ANC to be (necessarily) violent is something that I've struggled with for two years.
interesting: the idea that principle is generated by feeling. i think i like to agree with this because it reminds me of Lewis' Abolition of Man, have you read it? two people look at a waterfall, the one says "that's pretty" and moves on. the other says "that is beautiful" and stands in awe contemplating it's beauty. one could argue that the person's comment has nothing to do with the waterfall at all, simply that seeing the waterfall made the person feel beautiful. however, Lewis (and I) disagree. that person's statement is like a truth: the waterfall is beautiful. in other words, the person is placing an appropriate value on the waterfall, s/he recognizes that there is is something inherent in the waterfall that makes it beautiful, in fact, the waterfall is beautiful even when the person is not standing in front of it, even if no one sees it.
this is the connection to principle: i think it is exactly this kind of "feeling" that can generate a principle-when a person realizes that how they feel isn't actually a feeling at all but some truth about the universe.
can a person follow a principle they don't know? would you really call this following a principle? examples?
i haven't read Long Walk to Freedom, but that's the same struggle i have with Che.
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