Cold Love, 5 – Ideology

ideology – science of ideas; visionary speculation; manner of thinking characteristic of a class or individual; ideas at the basis of some economic or political theory or system.

The Concise Oxford Dictionary, 1964

(Photo credit – Time)

Ideology is a product of the mind, as our definitions above clearly indicate. Love is born in the heart, whatever form it takes. Very often, if not always, ideology and love are divided by a wide chasm – in practice if not in theory. Nevertheless, the two must coexist, and no mature human can function without having both present, however unconsciously and informally held.

We can intellectualize love, conceptualize love, analyze love, psychologize love, but we cannot create it by any exercise which originates primarily in the intellect. The heart may remain untouched despite all the most careful thought. The one emotion that ideology seems all too readily and too often to generate in abundance is hate. It may, however, also generate a pseudo-love, a counterfeit to stand in the place of what love, by its nature, is meant to be. Ideologically bred “love” is obsession, fanaticism, a sort of veneration of national, class, social, or economic identity. This pseudo-love is usually an amalgam of more than one of the above, and it absorbs the “lover’s” sense of self in the process.

Let us consider this paradox for a moment.

English and many other modern languages are not very supple in communicating the many shades and nuances of what real love entails. English is a poor vehicle in this respect, although eminently pliable in creating terminology and abundant expressions to convey technological and behavioural subtleties. Of the other modern languages of which I have some understanding, the same lack of nuance regarding love is true.

In contrast, the subtle ancient Greeks had four words for love to express nuance and context: eros indicated sexual love, erotic love; phileo – companionate or friendship love, sibling love, “brotherly” love; storge – parental, guardian, protective love; agape – self-denying, self-sacrificing, selfless love, characterized by God’s love for humanity in Jesus Christ. All of these are real forms of love, but the first three are incomplete without the last, which therefore governs them. For example, Jesus once said, “No one has greater love than this – laying down his life for a friend.” Phileo thus reaches its highest expression by giving oneself for the benefit of another without seeking a return. So too with eros and storge, as immediately becomes evident with a moment’s consideration. Parents know this instinctively in their love for their children, and mothers more readily than fathers, even if, these days, saying so is frowned upon as an old stereotype. Romantic love based on sexual attraction must develop beyond this if the relationship is to endure.

One of the greatest delusions of our arrogant claim to be a scientific society is to turn everything into ideology. For ideology, “love” must be captured, weaponized, and made into a commercial and economic commodity as a weapon in the arsenal of the social and cultural engineers claiming to know what we all need most.

Because of love’s universality in human experience, when directed by these careful social manipulators it automatically creates empathy and sympathy for whatever cause or target has been selected in the current program of “progress”. It is powerful in generating zeal on the one hand and shame, blame, and guilt on the other. It takes no prisoners, leaving all those confronted with its demands (whether reasonable or not) sensing their failure. This opens the path for the next demand for the latest newly discovered worthy recipients of official compassion – “rights”. Engineered, ideological “love” is the most potent marginalizing force we know, as well as the most pliable for manipulating well-disposed, fair-minded people to climb aboard the train to the destination the engineers have indicated is where all right-hearted people will want a just society to go. By nature it leaves those who don’t subscribe to its dictates out in the cold, literally and figuratively.

Canada is one of the most open societies on the planet. It has become a progressivist haven for much of the increasingly active and militant Woke agenda. With firmly ensconced ideologues presently in office, or acting as close advisers to those who are, the current government is more than slightly well-disposed to its claims. In addition, for many years the courts have consistently favoured the extension of basic human rights under the Charter of Rights and Freedoms to redesign Canadian society in the image of Progressive Utopia.

One of the latest signs of this is in the allocation of resources to favoured groups by the National Government. The latest example is in special funding for the development and strengthening of 2SLGBTQI+ community and life.

Statistics Canada has recently released the first solid statistical data regarding population breakdown according to type of household based on gender affiliation and orientation as of 2021. “Rainbow” self-identified households make up less than 2% of the population (about 700 000 individuals). Presumably, the thinking is that the Rainbow elements of society are in danger of re-exclusion, which may be arguable, although recent cultural trends would place that notion in grave doubt. The intent is certainly to make it fully mainstream and accepted as normal.

It may be argued that the government is supporting a specific set of lifestyle choices and ideological values. But it has become almost impossible to engage in any such discussion because of the immediate challenge that basic rights are being threatened.

By contrast, Canada has a very large disabled population which includes people of all ages, genders, orientations, and ethnic origins. This is the same sort of situation raised in terms of gender and sexual orientation identity. In 2017, 22% of the population, 6.2 million, were identified as suffering from one or more significant disabilities. The measure of consistent government neglect, both Federal and Provincial, of this huge population segment has been monumental and perennial for decades.

In government policy, 20% of the population with special needs far more urgent and basic than strengthening their cohesiveness and cultural presence are virtually invisible. During COVID-19 and its variants, almost nothing has been offered to help the large number of these sufferers living on barely enough to eat and find shelter. Tens of millions of dollars have been wasted on bogus claims for support by healthy citizens who found themselves temporarily unemployed or simply able to pass through the flimsy screening process to receive benefits. In comparison, what pittances were offered to the disabled were obscure and hard-to-find and apply for, with the result that few even knew they were available. Those that found what was offered were given meager one-time only payments that amounted to 25% of what was given to other applicants for one month. Elitist ideology creates a hierarchy of worth that these people do not fit into. Instead, we change laws to offer “medically assisted death” for those whose suffering has become intolerable while we offer next to nothing to alleviate their suffering or improve their quality of life.

The intent of this story is not to provoke anger, although indignation is not out of order. Rather, it is a very real and current illustration of the role of ideology in one of the most “advanced and progressive” nations on earth. We clearly see how implemented ideology in power designates what is valued according to our socio-cultural elites. In this case, compassion, which is one form of the expression of love, is granted to a quite small preferred minority which primarily self-identifies and is granted status almost without question. They enjoy strong, positive, official cultural recognition with increasingly well-entrenched rights bolstered by very public celebrations of their diversity and cultural identity. The disabled remain invisible and are offered no encouragement to be valued for who they are.

We could easy find other illustrations of the current, divisive cultural ideology now largely entrenched throughout the West. History offers numerous examples of the rampages misguided ideological cold love generates. The 20^th Century was full of them and documents all their worst features in their extreme nationalism, racism, and favoritism. Let us hope that we are not heading to a new variation of such horrors as we watch the growing disaffection and alienation of a large segment of the West’s less-favoured and less valued groups and classes beginning to seethe with anger over their new exclusion. While those rising may see the exclusion of formerly favoured (or seen to have been favoured) classes as only just, we can only warn that pendula always swing two ways. Breaking the law of backlash will not occur as long as those on the upside ram their values and status down the throat of those on the downside.

I am not advocating the withdrawal of rights and recognition to anyone. We must realize that ideology is a potent force too often prone to be abused and misused when it turns on the shame, guilt, and blame switches in people in order to manipulate them into compliance with a chosen agenda, shutting down any public discussion and dialogue.

Ideology cuts both ways. As Newton long ago observed, “To every action there is an equal and opposite reaction.” In metaphysics the rule is parallel: “Karma always returns to bite you in the butt”, or, more refined, “You reap what you sow; if your sow the wind, you will reap the whirlwind.” When it comes to legislating values and shaming opponents into submission, rather than leaving the avenue open to have a healthy discussion and debate in the appropriate forums for this, the resistance will not go away. If dialogue is suppressed, it will find its way out in uglier and angrier ways. These will not be any more open to change than the opposite which drove them underground in the first place.

Ideology is another manifestation of the rampant “cold love” plaguing the modern West and, by extension, the whole world. Its fruits betray it – anger, resentment, fanaticism, violent explosions, and, at worst when left to fester, war, revolt, and revolution.

No society yet devised by humans has yet proven immune to these evils.

The only way out of them is to rediscover agape. Whether we remain capable of that at a societal level we shall probably soon see.

For those who still profess Jesus Christ, agape must begin at home and within our own communities of family, faith, and local community. To rant and rave about its absence in the wide world is not helpful when it is not practiced right where we are with those who are right here with us – regardless of ideology, class, ethnicity, or gender identification.

NEXT TIME – COLD LOVE, 6 – CONCLUSION: ENDURING TO THE END