Parastatic

George Walford: Progress of Reason

We are constantly being told that society as a whole progresses towards ever higher levels of rationality, but some of the revelations occuring in the wake of the American TV-religion scandals go to support a different view. One of the movements involved is ‘PTL’ – variously interpreted as ‘Praise the Lord’ or ‘Pass the Loot’… read more »

George Hay: Letter to the Editor

It does seem to me that the “old” series of terms for the major ideologies – “protostatic,” “parastatic” and so on – has one big advantage: just because they are so outlandish they force people to stop and think. This is something I noticed also in the context of what Ron Hubbard’s critics used to… read more »

Adrian Williams: Metadynamic

(Minor Effort To Announce Dubious Yarns Neatly Allowing More Ideological Commentary) In IC25 (p3) appears a reference to a BBC job carrying the title Engineering Information and Electrical Installation Officer, giving the abbreviation EIEIO; a newspaper article is quoted as the source of information. That job title is inherently suspicious, for there is no obvious… read more »

George Walford: A Review and a Reply

This review, by Colin Mills, appeared in the ETHICAL RECORD, journal of the South Place Ethical Society, for March 1987. It is followed here by a reply which appeared in ER for April, both reprinted with the generous permission of the Editor of ER. – GW An Outline Sketch of Systematic Ideology by George W…. read more »

George Walford: In the Aftermath of an Election

In the British General Election of June 1987 the Conservative Party, having already held office for two consecutive terms, received 13,763,134 votes, Labour 10,033,633 and the Alliance 7,339,912. Other candidates between them 1,199,573. The turnout was 75.4 percent. This was after repeated experience of labour governments in Britain and after the conservatives had shown themselves to… read more »

George Walford: Ideologic

In IC12 we presented a table of the patterns of thinking – which is to say the logics – used by the different ideologies. With revisions it goes like this: Protostatic: X and non-X are not logically differentiated. Epistatic: X and non-X are in principle distinct. Parastatic: X is X and not non-X. Protodynamic: X… read more »

George Walford: Ideology of a Psychologist

The mystics have long insisted on the need for recognition of the dark side, and one achievement of the past century has been to link this intuition with the methods of science, producing rational studies of the irrational. One example appears in Aldous Huxley’s studies of consciousness-changing drugs (mainly, in those innocent days, peyoti) but… read more »

Shane Roberts: Superficially Interesting

Dear Editor, I found the Outline Sketch of Systematic Ideology to be, superficially at least, quite an interesting pamphlet. However, closer investigation revealed that behind the words there was little of substance. Also, the reasoning contains several flaws. On page 29 appears: A purely eidodynamic society could not do so [i.e. survive]. Every society, if… read more »

Adrian Williams: The Economy of Cities

IC20 referred to Jane Jacobs and her book The Economy of Cities (mistakenly called “The Culture of Cities”). There appears to be no ideological analysis in the article. A suitable position for further comment in IC would be under the heading “If it ain’t bust, don’t fix it.” The report was a summary of Jacobs’… read more »

George Walford: The Wages of Ideology

Systematic ideology claims to deal with practical matters as well as theoretical, and there is nothing much more practical than wages. The limited conception of ideology commonly used, both in everyday discussion and by the academics, occupies a different sphere from wages. Ideology in this sense is “false consciousness,” it belongs to the realm of… read more »

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