If religion in Europe is declyning and ideology has taken its place...

If religion in Europe is declyning and ideology has taken its place, why can't a study to be an ideologial instead of a theologian?

I want to dedicate my life to the study of pure ideology.

religion isn't dying.
irreligion becomes new religion, secularists invite their undertakers.

Yes but there's no good study of the new religion of irreligion.

>irreligion becomes new religion

I don't know if you are being disingenuous or not.
Do you mean "religion" like "daily rituals" or like "lifestyle" or something?

I mean it in a Chesterton sense of "When Man ceases to worship God he does not worship nothing but worships everything.". When people are removed from the belief of god all those impulses don't go away only redirected. This why for many people, politics/activism/ideology become their new religion.

Then I think it's an error of categorization, rolling all human thoughts and behavior into the label "religion" ("cease to worship God"), seems only to reinforce a Christian paradigm. Not very object way to try to analyze this supposed trend.

>why can't a study to be an ideologial instead of a theologian?

Do you want to live in a cloistered monastery? Do you want to ponder dogma all day and never have to interact with the real world? Do you have an aversion to actual work?
Then sociology is the field for you!

Well, I searched for sociological books on ideology and all I could find was this:

- Social and Psychological Bases of Ideology and System Justification

It was rather underwhelming.

It does make sense, though, in light of the fact that many more people today state the political views of spouse or dating partner (or sometimes even their friends) must closely align with their own, while the importance of religion has declined. The opposite was true fifty years ago.

Yes but Chesterton was a fat tub of shit, and gluttony is a sin in Christianity, so who gives a fuck what he had to say

Sociology, a "science" created by communists, for communists, is ideology in its purest form.

I dunno, I think more highly of sociology in general as psychology or even philosophy.

It could use with some improvement though.

>Sociology, a "science" created by communists
Just end yourself

Read moar Campbell.

>If *spook* in Europe is declyning and *spook* has taken its place, why can't a study to be an *spook* instead of a *spook*?

>I want to dedicate my life to the study of pure *spook*.

I do not care. I want to know:
- how is pure ideology formed
- has pure ideology religionlike belief
- what are the mechanisms of pure ideology
and so on and so on

Read carefully
Psychology is the study of the mind and thought, but it wont undertake to map the human brain scientifically. It's like if dieticians didn't scientifically test to see how digestion works, and then come to you and tell you about calories and fats and what they do to your body. Would you trust dieticians in that scenario? Psychology is one half of what it needs to be to be taken seriously. Right now it's so caught up in avoiding racism, sexism and elitism (go figure, the limited tests done so far all point strongly to the fact that race is real and that genders have huge differences, and that a smart person will be smart and a dumb person will be dumb).

Philosophy is the study of knowledge and reality (or maybe it's better to say that it's the quest to establish an agreed upon reality). The problem with philosophy is that once again, it's done on half knowledge. We deal with abstract concepts that have, and likely will always have, nothing to do with science. You can't prove or disprove god, no matter how many people try. It's just a question of philosophy and how you define reality.

Sociology is pretty much philosophy, but applied to societies not to individuals (it's the study of the elements surrounding human society). What this effectively is, is a combination of the two fields you find lacking for whatever reason.

Think about this for a second. You have a field that desperately needs science's involvement to complete it and vindicate it, but doing so will likely vindicate and justify racism, sexism, and all that bag, and you have a field that operates entirely on academic hot air. If you've worked with philosophers you likely understand how contrarian they can be, and just reading books should give you a flavor on how varied and completely crazy philosophy is. So your highly favored sociology is built on the most ephemeral foundations.

Sociology is suspect for these reasons listed above.

Also, to be clear, if you look at forms of government from the angel of psychology, there is an alarming difference between a democratic capitalist society and a democratic communist society. One has existed, the other never has. More often than not (in fact 100% of the time) communism becomes "the workers are changing jobs, but the elite are staying the same" and democratic capitalism becomes "the workers are staying the same, but the elite are changing." Unfortunately even capitalism has it's faults. In the USA right now we see it most keenly. The coming election was almost Bush v Clinton. They might as well have an oligarchy at this point.

So I have to repeat; what is so crazy about disliking communism? It's as flawed as sociology is, and the truth is that most communist thinkers spoke of sociology, and we can see it's use, when applied, is never healthy.

I think you oversell sociology, but I do think communist idealists found it utopian, and communist realists (fledgling dictators) found it to be a mutable field they could easily influence and twist into the perfect tool for the job of ruling a people and manipulating with partial or straight disinformation.

>why can't a study to be an ideologial instead of a theologian?
Just get a degree with "political" in its name.

You make valid points. Thank you for the contribution.
I know you can study political science and political philosophy, but they seem to ignore that ideology and religion could be the same psychological system.

>they seem to ignore that ideology and religion could be the same psychological system

Stirner seems conclude they are one and the same through his idea of "spooks" (some consider him a proto-psychoanalyst) which can be compared to Zizeks "Ideology".

I use Zizek ironically: he is entertaining and interesting but I consider his philosophical foundation flawed: Lacan was a charlatan.

In other words: by saying Stirner is a psychoanalysist I will declare he is not my property but in fact a spook.

My family in Rwanda was killed by Christian terriosts who blew up my family while they were asleep in bed. At least suicide bombers only do it because they're outmatched by the enemy.

>they seem to ignore that ideology and religion could be the same psychological system.
I'm gonna ask for some [citation needed] with that, because I've never seen them treated separately, mostly because the discipline is secular per se - and often the teacher also is.

>what is the lord's resistance army

Ok you got me. It is more that I have yet to read about it being compared.
So do you have any papers that state otherwise?

Note, you know, when I say psychological system I am not talking of parts of the brain but more like cognitive biases and so on and so on.

You already can. You're asking why no person/government will keep you alive just so you can pursue a fruitless hobby.

What if the study of ideology is very useful for propaganda. Surely the government would like that? Mein Gott! I think it is.

>Sociology is suspect for these reasons listed above.
No, you're wrong. Sociology is a much larger field than what you're supposing it is. Or please explain for me how something like studying people's behaviour during mass evacuations are "pretty much philosophy".

>So I have to repeat; what is so crazy about disliking communism?
This has nothing to do with disliking communism, but the retarded assumption that sociology was created by commies. And saying we shouldn't study sociology because there's commies are as retarded as to claim we shouldn't study medicine due to Japanese and Nazi biological experiments or physics due to the nuclear bomb; it's guilty by association.

That's what base and superstructure is for, or how to create these cognitive biases

Start with A. James Gregor, and Emilio Gentile.

Thanks user.

You can, it's called humanities.