ideology

Let's think of that moment when a woman washed the feet of Jesus with the nard, so expensive: it is a religious moment, a moment of gratitude, a moment of love. And he [Judas] stands apart with bitter criticism: 'But this could have been used for the poor!' This is the first reference that I have found, in the Gospel, to poverty as an ideology. The ideologue does not know what love is, because he does nt know how to give himself.

Ideology is the light that creates darkness.

What Althusser does_ is to rethink the concept of ideology in terms of Lacan__ __maginary_. For the relation of an individual subject to society as a whole in Althusser__ theory is rather like the relation of the small child to his or her mirror-image in Lacan__. In both cases, the human subject is supplied with a satisfyingly unified image of selfhood by identifying with an object which reflects this image back to it in a closed, narcissistic circle. In both cases, too, this image involves a misrecognition, since it idealizes the subject__ real situation. The child is not actually as integrated as its image in the mirror suggests; I am not actually the coherent, autonomous, self generating subject I know myself to be in the ideological sphere, but the __ecentred_ function of several social determinants. Duly enthralled by the image of myself I receive, I subject myself to it; and it is through this __ubjection_ that I become a subject.

Here we come upon the old, old craze of the world, which has not yet learned to do without clericalism--that to live and work *for an idea*is man's calling, and according to the faithfulness its fulfilment his *human worth* is measured

How can be any improvement and growth in slavery?? Don't waste yourself in jobs ...People putting all of their efforts and trying to satisfy their "BOSS" by filling his pockets by giving all of their lives, time and energies to someone else__ dream, with the expectation of a delusional growth in income and designation with the passage of time. There is no growth in boundaries; growth is in freedom not in slavery_..It only makes you so ordinary and small in your own eye & when you are nothing to your own self you become nothing to anyone...

Interestingly, one mate of mine, a proper leftie, in his heyday all Red Wedge and right-on punch-ups, was melancholy. "I thought I'd be overjoyed, but really it's just _ another one bites the dust _" This demonstrates, I suppose, that if you opposed Thatcher's ideas it was likely because of their lack of compassion, which is really just a word for love. If love is something you cherish, it is hard to glean much joy from death, even in one's enemies.

...the years have taught me not to wonder too much at the dark things men do. Strange how it is that men never act crueller than when they're fighting for the sake of an idea. We've been killing since Cain over who stands closer to god. It seems to me that cruelty is just in the way of things. You drive yourself mad if you take it all personal. Those who hurt you don't have the power over you they would like. That's why they do what they do. And I'm not going to give them the power now. But it was a cruel thing that they did, and when they had finished hurting me, a splinter of loneliness seemed to break off and stay inside me forever.

Absolute virtue is impossible and the republic of forgiveness leads, with implacable logic, to the republic of the guillotine.

I'm as proud of my inconsistencies as I am my consistencies.

Capitalist realism insists on treating mental health as if it were a natural fact, like weather (but, then again, weather is no longer a natural fact so much as a political-economic effect). In the 1960s and 1970s, radical theory and politics (Laing, Foucault, Deleuze and Guattari, etc.) coalesced around extreme mental conditions such as schizophrenia, arguing, for instance, that madness was not a natural, but a political, category. But what is needed now is a politicization of much more common disorders. Indeed, it is their very commonness which is the issue: in Britain, depression is now the condition that is most treated by the NHS. In his book The Selfish Capitalist, Oliver James has convincingly posited a correlation between rising rates of mental distress and the neoliberal mode of capitalism practiced in countries like Britain, the USA and Australia. In line with James__ claims, I want to argue that it is necessary to reframe the growing problem of stress (and distress) in capitalist societies. Instead of treating it as incumbent on individuals to resolve their own psychological distress, instead, that is, of accepting the vast privatization of stress that has taken place over the last thirty years, we need to ask: how has it become acceptable that so many people, and especially so many young people, are ill?

[T]he imagination, like certain wild animals, will not breed in captivity.

Capitalist ideology in general, Zizek maintains, consists precisely in the overvaluing of belief - in the sense of inner subjective attitude - at the expense of the beliefs we exhibit and externalize in our behavior. So long as we believe (in our hearts) that capitalism is bad, we are free to continue to participate in capitalist exchange. According to Zizek, capitalism in general relies on this structure of disavowal. We believe that money is only a meaningless token of no intrinsic worth, yet we act as if it has a holy value. Moreover, this behavior precisely depends upon the prior disavowal - we are able to fetishize money in our actions only because we have already taken an ironic distance towards money in our heads.

Pakistan not only means freedom and independence but the Muslim Ideology which has to be preserved, which has come to us as a precious gift and treasure and which, we hope other will share with us.

So I resort back to such ideology: we all have a calling. We all have an ultimate purpose. On that is laid before us by destiny or one that is positioned in the crosshairs of our long-term goals.

The humanitarian philosophies that have been developed (sometimes under some religious banner and invariably in the face of religious opposition) are human inventions, as the name implies - and our species deserves the credit. I am a devout atheist - nothing else makes any sense to me and I must admit to being bewildered by those, who in the face of what appears so obvious, still believe in a mystical creator. However I can see that the promise of infinite immortality is a more palatable proposition than the absolute certainty of finite mortality which those of us who are subject to free thought (as opposed to free will) have to look forward to and many may not have the strength of character to accept it.Thus I am a supporter of Amnesty International, a humanist and an atheist. I believe in a secular, democratic society in which women and men have total equality, and individuals can pursue their lives as they wish, free of constraints - religious or otherwise. I feel that the difficult ethical and social problems which invariably arise must be solved, as best they can, by discussion and am opposed to the crude simplistic application of dogmatic rules invented in past millennia and ascribed to a plethora of mystical creators - or the latest invention; a single creator masquerading under a plethora of pseudonyms. Organisations which seek political influence by co-ordinated effort disturb me and thus I believe religious and related pressure groups which operate in this way are acting antidemocratically and should play no part in politics. I also have problems with those who preach racist and related ideologies which seem almost indistinguishable from nationalism, patriotism and religious conviction.

No ideology or psychological theory can possibly do justice to the full range of human experience.

Progressive feminists have shown nothing but the most reflexive, regressive contempt for women on the other side of the ideological aisle. It doesn__ matter if you__e a conservative stay at home mom, work at home mom, or work outside the home mom. If you__e Right, the Left is gonna hate.

Individual cultures and ideologies have their appropriate uses but none of them erase or replace the universal experiences, like love and weeping and laughter, common to all human beings.