Idea and ideology, how a thought could become a lifestyle and how often we choose to really assess the ideologies we label ourselves with. Choose what you want to be, become more than you are, popular ideas that most have encountered in one way or another: that we freely choose who we are and what we believe in.
How much does socio-cultural conditioning influence the ways in which we label and present ourselves? How often does not knowing or not having decided suggest a character flaw and why? To be unsure of oneself in the naming and taking upon of labels and absolutes in corrected answers seems much less popular than having exactly what you think you believe ready, panned out, and practiced.
Can you know yourself without all the labels? What’s beyond the corrected answers that we have absolutely decided upon? Is personhood really that well described by all of these labels and ideologies we tend to want to present ourselves with? How different would the world be if we had more allowance for unknowing?
Especially in being free to say I don’t have definitive answers to most ideological questions and wanting to remain as neutral and open to new ideas as possible, there is definite stigma attached to ambiguity and neutrality in our culture. How could one ever say they are beyond belief? Gravity could be called a belief, if we are all subject to belief, and at a certain point it doesn’t matter what my perspective tells me, I’m still attached to the planet spinning around the solar system. Can’t escape all belief, couldn’t possibly be free of all ideologies and ideologues, but how often do we accept ideas and apply them to ourselves without really testing them or knowing entirely what they’re about? And how often does this mean irreversible stigma is being applied to us? A single decision on a single issue could mean a whole group of people for or against you, and whatever idea has been applied to you. How could we change influence toward more involvement of uncertainty and would this help guide us away from some of the more poisonous socio-cultural norm we have been conditioned with? How many of my ideologies are decided for me already, based on assumption, apriory and socio-cultural norm? Free thought and free will, these assurances of choice and options that are always present even when hidden: there is always an alternative, there are always other perspectives. While I have the ultimate choice in all of my beliefs, there are some at least that I feel are there solely because of conditioning, because of where I’m from and how I’ve grown up. Granted, even those opinions and ideas often change, but some of them are oftentimes more difficult to reckon simply because it’s not brought up as often or seen very frequently. What assumptions and opinions do I have that have been decided for me by our culture? Any decision is a continual one, and even a simple yes or no simplex has differences of infinitum to the possibilities in the human mind to decide something: how often are opinions taken as absolute decision? These questions of culture, of normality and especially of ideologies and beliefs aren’t being asked because I think there are sure, set answers, but because I want better questions and not answers, especially about ideas and belief, culture and normality.
