Honouring the Truth

[insanetimbo]

During my research proposal presentation, Professor Jules stated that she disagreed with my perspective of ethics. She suggested every person is, to a degree, blind to the ideological hegemonies that dictate their perspective of ethics in a situation. I’d never thought about the unconscious dimension before

Comments

[jeltzz]

Doesn't your illustration show, not the failure of the ethical system, but a feature of it? That ethical considerations can be culturally adapted. That it may be right to honour one's parents differently in different cultures?

I'm not sure that's a problem, if you are saying that it is a problem.

[insanetimbo]

Yeah, that's kinda what i'm wondering. It doesn't bother me at all that others might weight and underemphasise different parts of scripture to the ones I would. But it does throw a spanner into the works of teaching that I commonly hear from the pulpit, which says something along the lines of "Jesus came to fulfil the law, not destroy it, so you all need to take on these moral guidelines which equate to [the bits that are presently culturally palatable within] the law".

Thanks for the thoughts. I'd love it if you could recommend me a good book on ethics.

[bwandirunnerw]

just to throw a wrench in it...

for this young christian, what if he feels God has placed the calling of acrobat on his life - then do you honor God or honor your parents who desire for you to be boring and wealthy?

[insanetimbo]

touche!

..and then just to make this excercise really annoying, what if his/her parents also believe God wants their child to have a safe job?

Makes me want to run away to the circus just to avoid thinking about it!

Acts and the NT

[anonymous]

I think it's really interesting how in Acts and the Pauline letters the early Christians wrestled with the same question that you are posing. Did the Gentile converts need to be circumcised etc? It seems from my reading that the solution of the early Christians was, in very basic terms, 'do what seems best to you, since you have the Holy Spirit- and avoid these things, eating food sacrificed to idols etc, which may offend Jews unnecessarily, and be a barrier to love'. Later Paul, to the Corinthians facing a similar question about the law, says it doesn't matter whether they eat food sacrificed to idols or not- even though the Jerusalem Council had been pretty clear about that. Obviously there is a broader picture here about the place of the law as God intended it, and the supercession of the law by the new covenant, which makes the focus on the law of the Jews a problem because they've missed the next thing- and treating the law as an idol Paul says! I'm not suggesting that all ethical boundaries are blurred by culture, and therefore

Re: Acts and the NT

[insanetimbo]

awesome thoughts - thanks Richard!

[alasthai]

Values are not invisible so much as they are overlooked. They are there to be seen, but we are used to not looking at them.

Reading recommendations:
Louis Althusser, 'Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses', in Lenin and Philosophy and Other Essay;
Terry Eagleton, Ideology, an Introduction;
Fredric Jameson, The Political Unconscious: Narrative as a Socially Symbolic Act;
George Lictheim, The Concept of Ideology and Other Essays.

Ironically, a few of these are oblivious to their own ideology, particularly because Marxism has long used 'ideology' as a pejorative term for the state-sponsored, oppressive set of ideas against which loyal Marxists struggle For The Good Of The People. Marx was also quite blind to his own prejudices in his writing.

The easy way to spot ideological influence is in value judgements. As soon as anyone says or implies that anything is good or bad, a value judgement is being made, which means that the thing in question is being compared with a set of ideas about what is right.

Can we rightly assume to

[insanetimbo]

Hey Thanks!

I'll check out those books. Value judgements sounds like a pretty good category to look for when seeking out a person's values. I suppose it would follow that the generalisations and assumptions a person casually makes about social and political events or actors might also expose the unconscious idealogies floating around.

Interesting point about some Marxists' tendency to consider themselves untarnished by dirty hegemonic idealogical bias. My feeling is a slightly different (but in effect similar) thing occurs in some Christian circles, namely the "I don't have a bias, I just follow the Bible" variety of blindness that I hint at above. I'm going to be thinking all day about different communities and their relationship to idea of idealogy/cultural bias. Will communities who view bias as negative, be more prone to blindness of their own values?

Most importantly, what values do I have that I'm largely unaware of? now there's a question worth asking.

Thanks again

[alasthai]

You are right: assumptions, in particular, are great for this, because they often show the parts of an ideology which remain outside of discourse and thus effectively beyond question. It is very hard to argue with what is never stated, after all.

Another feature of this, which you may or may not have run into, is the relative visibility of alternative views. This works (unsurprisingly) in much the same way as the relative visibility of everyone else's cultural behaviours, as opposed to one's own: most people are far more aware of ideas with which they disagree than ideas with which they agree (because the latter seem to be 'natural' or 'common sense'). On this basis, a group who view bias as negative will generally view others' biases as negative, while remaining unconscious of their own.

I really should shut up now. Ideology is what I study all day, every day.

I am very glad to have the opportunity to speak with you again (having spent quite a while trying to remember your lj username).

[anonymous]

Try being an Australian born Chinese daughter who wants to be an actor but whose parents pressure her to do medical school...

Oh wait, after a quarter of a century she decided to go to drama school anyway!

N xx

[insanetimbo]

Gold! Onya Nic you knock 'em dead (Then revive them)