To me, ideology is corrupt; it's a parasite on religious structures. To be an ideologue is to have all of the terrible things that are associated with religious certainty and none of the utility. If you're an ideologue, you believe everything that you think. If you're religious, there's a mystery left there.
Interpretation
Ideology can undermine the depth of religious experience, turning beliefs into rigid certainties.
In this quote, Jordan Peterson critiques the nature of ideology, describing it as a corrupting force that drains the vitality from religious structures. He contrasts ideologues, who are firmly convinced of their beliefs to the point of dogmatism, with true religious belief, which allows for uncertainty and mystery. Peterson implies that the richness of faith comes from its ability to embrace doubt and exploration, unlike the rigid nature of ideological adherence.
In practice
In a discussion on the role of ideology in society, this quote could highlight the dangers of dogmatic thinking.
Part of the reason there's an injunction to the truth, for example, is that if you're in a circumstance of extreme uncertainty, your best weapon, let's say, or your best tool or your best defense is the truth, because it keeps things simpler.
I don't tell people, 'You're okay the way that you are.' That's not the right story. The right story is, 'You're way less than you could be.'
Once someone has spent enough time cultivating bad habits and biding their time, they are much diminished. Much of what they could have been has dissipated.
If you learn a martial art, you learn to be dangerous, but simultaneously, you learn to control it.
Life is tragic. You are tiny and flawed and ignorant and weak, and everything else is huge, complex, and overwhelming.
Music has an intrinsic meaning, which has always been mysterious to me.
True charity is the desire to be useful to others with no thought of recompense.
Money alone is absolutely good, because it is not only a concrete satisfaction of one need in particular; it is an abstract satisfaction of all.
Religion has not civilized man, man has civilized religion.
His life, measured in space and time, will take up a mere few lines, which my ignorance will abbreviate further.
One must care about a world one will not see.
Objects exist and if one pays more attention to them than to people, it is precisely because they exist more than the people. Dead objects are still alive. Living people are often already dead.
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