underlakers:Ever since man began to write and erect cities, life has sucked for the vast majority.
Specifically, ever since the human race invented social stratification (that's what social stratification means - another good term is "structural violence"), which may have been as early as the changeover from hunter-gatherer societies to agricultural.
People at the top of such societies naturally preach the essentially rightness of social stratification, seeing as how it's what keeps them at the top. The only way for an ideological system from below (such as a religion) to become predominant is for some group or groups at the top of various societies to appropriate and bastardize it to suit their own needs - which means naturally, to make it agree with the rightness of social stratification/structural violence. So the predominant version of an ideology in an unequal society is always going to have some revoltingly anti-human elements; doesn't mean the ideology itself is inherently corrupt. Least ways, that's how I look at things, anyway.
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regna
(no subject)
Date: 2009-10-29 12:36 am (UTC)Specifically, ever since the human race invented social stratification (that's what social stratification means - another good term is "structural violence"), which may have been as early as the changeover from hunter-gatherer societies to agricultural.
People at the top of such societies naturally preach the essentially rightness of social stratification, seeing as how it's what keeps them at the top. The only way for an ideological system from below (such as a religion) to become predominant is for some group or groups at the top of various societies to appropriate and bastardize it to suit their own needs - which means naturally, to make it agree with the rightness of social stratification/structural violence. So the predominant version of an ideology in an unequal society is always going to have some revoltingly anti-human elements; doesn't mean the ideology itself is inherently corrupt. Least ways, that's how I look at things, anyway.