Comparing religion within revolutionary movements
Because of dissonance, things are not always as they seem. This is true on a personal level as well as on a grander scale. For example, America has long been embroiled in a great alleged battle between capitalism and socialism, but both the American and Russian revolutions overthrew monarchy.
In Russia, the Church and State were nearly synonymous. In America, religion was autonomous. There was no national religion, but regions of the country were religiously affiliated. All monarchs claimed that they ruled through divine law. God was on their side, and they either tolerated or persecuted different religious beliefs. Freedom of religion was part of some monarchies.
The Declaration of Independence claimed that God saw all men as equal. This was an extension of the idea that all religions are equal. Ideas migrate. Both the rebels and the monarch were claiming that God was on their side. The meaning of Divine Law had changed.
Communists opposed religion because it made people too passive. According to Marx, the faithful would not revolt and overthrow their economic oppressors. In America, however, the historical view was that religion was too inflammatory and aggressive. Through completely opposite reasoning, both separated church from state. In a relatively short time, God went from being the dominate idea to being secularized or suppressed, even though the revolutionary arguments were morally-based.
Violent Islamic jihadists, in contrast, are fueled by the desire to have religion more involved in politics. Conservative Christian movements have the same goal. Elements of both tend to be the most paranoid about the other, because they see the world more similarly. Splitting hairs is like splitting the atom. The smaller the differences, the more explosive the passions.
Revolutionaries make claim to some form of divine law, either by God or by Nature. For the atheist communist, it was the marketplace of history. According to the Hegelian dialectic, ideas battle and combine to form new ideas. It is akin to the theory of evolution and competitive capitalism. The law of the jungle is that might is right, and only the most fit survive. Ideas have their battleground, too. The Marxists were arguing that because they had the new idea, it was automatically the best idea.
All Revolutionaries claim providence to an idea that is the best for the many. They would deny being motivated by personal greed. They see greed and abuse of power by others as the main obstacle to a just society. They are willing to sacrifice themselves, and the life of their self-defined enemy, for the greater good. Killing represents a well-reasoned choice, like removing a cancerous tumor. Afterwards, presumably, the body will heal and be strong, pure and happy once again, but they need to be in charge, first. Their lust for power mirrors the lust of those in power. Every crime has a motive. History is a crime of complex interpretations of simple motives by similar criminals.
Dissonance is holding two contradictory ideas simultaneously. To see only good in oneself, and only the bad in another, is a characteristic of dissonance. Wherever there is violence, there is a triumph of dissonance.
Digging further into history, we discover that The American Revolution would not have happened without the support of the churches. The teachers of Divine Law changed their mind. The Great Awakening (1730-1750) marked the idea of individual redemption and played a part in the individualistic self-determination of democracy. War marks the death of commonwealth. Taxes were the cause cà ©là ¨bre in the 1770's. Here we are, hundreds of years after monarchy ended, still arguing over taxes. Dissonance can easily survive the battlefield victory.
In the case of the American Civil War, religion was used to argue both in favor of and against slavery. Some claimed that God made negroes inferior to whites. The Declaration of Independence, in contrast, made the claim that all men were equals. The Southerners claimed a right to separate from the Union using the same document that argued against their position. The tension between principles and policies has thousands of nuances. Logic and consistency are hard to find in history. We are all, to some extent, both the victim and the crime.
Cognitive Dissonance
Believing that 2+2=4 in math class, and believing that 2+2=5 in business class, is cognitive dissonance. Another way to understand cognitive dissonance is as the lack of comparative analysis. Contradictory ideas exist simultaneously in the same mind or institution because they are never compared with one another. Similar to the left hand not knowing what the right hand is doing, cognitive dissonance is an internal house divided: a mind. Emotional dissonance is simultaneous feelings of love and hate. Physical dissonance is laboring to destroy.
People do not want to be wrong. In fact, once they realize that they are wrong, they can never accept what was wrong again. External pressures may force them to mask what they know, but once they know a new truth, they can never consciously reject it.
The book 1984, by George Orwell, is the study of a man who comes to believe the opposite of what he once believed. Society attempts to force him to believe the old lie again. History is full of the failures of authority that attempted to impose a dogmatic belief. Because of their own denial, authority attempts to use force to make truth submissive. It can never work for long. A house can no more be divided than the person. The truth cannot be suppressed indefinitely. Dissonance creates too many problems to maintain itself.
Next Page 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8
(Note: You can view every article as one long page if you sign up as an Advocate Member, or higher).
1
1
