ideological wake

Posted on November 10, 2007 By OneMysticalMonkey

Personal agendas and intentions. Most people have them; Few are willing to admit them. These impressions and influences are all around us. They are found in our daily lives from the people with whom we associate, the companies at which we work, as well as in our books and the news, art, dance, and other media. But regardless of whether a specific agenda is acknowledged, widely admitted, or kept secreted away in some corner of our consciousness, it remains in the world and provides influence to those who happen to come in contact with that person, that media or situation.

Often, these ideas and agendas are fodder for controversy, for debate, even for rebellion – particularly if they go against the grain of established and expected thought, behavior and social structures. World history is riddled with examples – totalitarian governments or varying flavors of fanaticism, the creation of a new branch of an existing religion or the development of a whole new religion, intentional book burnings, religious or political persecutions and genocide, or even the development of the Impressionist or Dadaist fine art movements. We are surrounded!

And indeed, we are surrounded. To navigate through this chaos of individual agendas takes time and awareness so that we may evaluate for ourselves these influences and find our own understanding of the World and local cultures in which we live. But not all ideologies and agendas match our own experiences, intentions, or ideas about a given subject. But that is not necessarily a “bad” thing. Although people often have knee-jerk reactions to ideas which oppose those things they were taught or otherwise lead to believe, it is alternative ideas -whether we agree with them or not- which encourage change in the world. They are part of what sparks contemplation of even more new ideas and encourages interactions between people and ideologies which may not have happened otherwise.

That is not to say however, that we should just float in the wake of the most recent ideology to which we have been exposed, but that instead we should make a conscious effort to experience the world and its phenomena with a clear, unemotional perception. It takes an open, serene, confident mind and heart to evaluate all that we see, hear and experience, without the prejudices which we have been taught to see or feel. If we can break through our own preconceptions of things, not allowing ourselves to be limited by our own training and teachings so that we may genuinely evaluate the World for ourselves, then we are truly free, no longer so impacted by ideas or agendas which do not, on the surface, compliment to our own…

“Inside yourself or outside, you never have to change what you see, only the way you see it.”
– Thaddeus Golas

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