Ideologies are sets of beliefs and ideas determining closely your thinking, judgment, behavior, and social interaction throughout life. Ideologies may be religious, social, political, national, cultural, educational, spiritual, traditional, and scientific. And if it ends in 'ism, ' it is an ideology for certain, as capitalism, nationalism, socialism, and communism. However, all religions and schools of thought are ideologies, and most of them do not end in 'ism.' Since when you have enclosed sets of beliefs meant to remain highly consistent among themselves and highly exclusive, keeping you within while criticizing and attacking the rest, then these are ideologies. Cults have their own ideologies at their base, along with entire regimes and political parties, scientific organizations, social hierarchies including hierarchic Brotherhoods, and entire nations.
The major difference between ideological thinking and normal, natural thinking is that ideologies restrain your cognition to specific, artificial, predetermined sets of beliefs, for various reasons. And this gives ideologies their specific, artificial, consensual, enforced structure, as opposed to normal reasoning and normal behavior, which remain genuine and unrestricted. Since this is the difference between freedom and servitude, between the accurate and the consensual, and between genuine fulfillment and hierarchic assignments. And many times, ideologies state upfront that they are based on beliefs and consensus, that you have to serve someone or something in that ideology, that you have to follow specific rules and beliefs, or that you have to state specific oaths and attend specific rituals and ceremonies. And so you do, for someone remarkable, or for your own good, or for the good of your own kind, but you have to do so exactly as stated in the ideology. And sometimes it is good, and sometimes dreadful, while the other ideologies are always dreadful, but not yours. While it always upsets you when anyone challenges your ideology in any manner, which is another detail defining ideologies consistently.
Are ideologies good or bad in this world? They are certainly good, mostly yours, since they mean the world to you. And they are fake, irrelevant, and even harmful, but the other ideologies, never yours. And as you already notice, it depends on your own perspective, while the good and the bad in this world should relate to the world itself. If not, you end up following your own wellbeing and gratification in this world and throughout life, or the wellbeing and gratification of your remarkable authority, or of your own kind, or of all followers of this ideology, but not of the entire world, with you included. And this is the bad part, for the rest of the world, because it triggers discrimination, exploitation, and consequently, implicit extermination. This is a main characteristic of all remarkable ideologies, and this is exactly what harms this world.
Throughout this book, we study ideologies in all details and from all perspectives, in order to identify and understand them, just to be able to protect yourself and this world from them. Because if thoughts can harm you in any manner, then ideologies certainly can, since they may bring this world to discrimination, servitude, and totalitarianism, as they always do.
