So, last night, I did an analysis of Understanding the Times worldviews to develop an overall makeup of my worldview. And the results were...interesting. Some aspects I expected, but some I didn't. So how much different did I expect the results to be?
Well, if I just had to off chance estimate what my worldview would be, I would have guessed:
Secular Humanism- 60%
Cosmic Humanism- 12.5%
Marxism-Leninism- 12.5%
Postmodernism- 7.5%
Christianity- 7.5%
This was the rough estimate. My logic behind this was the following:
Secular humanism: I knew this was my dominant worldview, and I was even tempted to say that it was more than 60%, but at the same time, I felt like I did the other views injustice if I made it more. I mean, if the other 4 views each influenced my views by 10%, 60% would be as high as I could make it. And as you can tell some seemed more dominant than others.
Cosmic Humanism: This one is a significant secondary worldview to me. If not THE secondary worldview of mine. But...it also has limited application. While it has solid answers on some spiritual questions, it tends to be far more limited in secular realms like politics. Especially how it was framed.
Marxism-Leninism- Like it or not, Marxism is an influence on my views. While I feel marxism-leninism is dogmatic, I do feel like its economic analyses are sometimes a major player in how I view the economy. Even if I don't embrace socialism or communism, I do still critique capitalism, and marxism is a very relevant ideology here.
Postmodernism: A lesser influence of mine. While the symbolic interactionist perspective as per sociology is relevant, I highly dislike its emphasis on subjective truth over objective reality, and let's face it, I think identity politics are cancer. While relevant at times, it is not my preferred worldview. I mean push comes to shove, between marxism and post modernism I would generally say marxism has more influence on my actual views than postmodernism.
Christianity: While I was a die hard Christian back in the day, nowadays, I despise it mostly. Still, reading through the book, some aspects of the conservative political perspective have had a lasting impact on me. Like support for rule of law, limited government, rights (although I take the more secular framing of what rights are), and at least nominal support for capitalism. While my progressive worldview has largely stamped out most conservative influences, I do generally have libertarian influences, respect for the constitution, and skepticism toward authoritarian tendencies. I also am skeptical of "utopianism" and know how badly utopian visions can go. This is why I spend so much time researching and discussing the policies I support. I DO believe at this point that we can change the world for the better. BUT, policy needs to be based in reality, supported by facts and evidence suggesting it can actually work, and ultimately be relatively nonintrusive in peoples' lives in a negative way. I'm not against the idea of "utopia", but any idea needs to be supported by a ruthless lens of "how can we actually make this work without it going badly?" And this is why im still more of a liberal than a socialist. "Leftists' go too far, push too radical of change, and the right is right in the sense that they do fail.
Honestly, this is also why I ultimately remain more drawn to the more moderate and fact based secular humanist perspective over the more extreme marxist type perspectives. As I see it marxism is great at critiquing capitalism but horrible at offering actual solutions to it.
BUt yeah, that's why I split the different ideas as I did in my head. And while secular humanism was almost dead on at 61%, cosmic humanism was as high as 17.5%, postmodernism had more impact, and marxism-leninism had less. So what gives?
Well, cosmic humanism really did influence how I saw things more than I expected it too. While not relevant to politics as per the book, it really does influence how I see the world and relationships to each other. So I was drawn to it more than I expected.
Now, the real interesting question is what happened with post modernism and marxism?
Well, post modernism was CLOSE. I estimated 7.5% and I got 9.5%. So I guess that wasn't too out of the ordinary. But then Marxism was only 8%, less than post modernism and much less than expected. So what gives?
Well, marxism leninism had a problem in this book. As far as the positive aspects of the ideology, it was just too similar to secular humanism. And I saw no reason to really embrace the marxist view when the secular humanist one did a better job.
The reason I am primarily a secular humanist is because I like an ideology based on objective reality. I like reason, I like evidence. I like facts leading me to conclusions. MLism is basically the same "atheistic" perspective, but with a lot more dogma behind it. With evolution for example, sure, MLs believed in evolution. But, they had to force the idea to conform to their dialectical materialism concept. And that's stupid. Im not against dialectical materalism, but applying it to every facet of life is problematic. And honestly, im going to be honest, I hate dogma. Im going to be honest, I struggled to identify with even some of secular humanism in this thread because the book was so intent on treating it like a religion and quoting the humanist manifestos, which no modern humanists actually read or use as guiding principles to their ideology. The thing is, secular humanism is often associated with "free thought" and tries NOT to be like a religion. There are no dogmas, there is no strict code that one has to adopt. Some might say not believing in a god, but even then, I DO believe (for evidence based reasons consistent with my worldview) and I STILL adopt many principles of secular humanism. It will always be a part of my philosophical DNA. Regardless of my belief in god. Because that individual belief does NOT define my worldview, my worldview defines my belief in god. All I am is a humanist who found evidence he found convincing.
But that's the problem with most other worldviews. Marxism leninism is no exception. Sure. Marxism can be useful in economics too, analyzing problems with capitalism. But even in this book, secular humanism did an objectively better job at approaching economics. When it addressed socialism it did it in the softer "economic democracy" framework (so democratic socialism or market socialism, not marxism leninism, it clearly learned from that worldview's mistakes), and honestly, it seemed more willing to go social democratic than socialist.
And let's face it. Even my support for UBI and the like stems from humanism first, marxism second.
That said, marxism just didn't show up here. It was too dogmatic and ideologically rigid to really be worth addressing. To the point that even post modernism was more influential.
As for post modernism, I mean, even if I hate many aspects of the worldview, it still was more moderate than what the tankies wanted. I really dont like tankie ideology. Moderate versions a la humanism are good, but the extreme left is scary. Post modernism might be cancer with the social justice obsession, but they still ended up finding more of a niche in capturing my mind's real estate than literal marxism did. I still like welfare states, even if mine are founded on MUCH different ideological principles. And even if I despise critical theory and identity politics in practice, I still have intellectual respect for the ideas in a sociological context. So for me, postmodernism makes some decent points, whether I like it or not, and while it is not a major influence on me by any means (secular humanism is still roughly 6x more influential overall), I mean, I can't say I fully disagree with it. I just dont prioritize it and dont let it define my ideology.
I guess all in all due to my lack of respect for dogmas, I just can't really define myself as either a marxist or a postmodernist. Both are very sociological perspectives that offer a valuable lens to society...but they are merely a lens. One tool in the toolbox. I don't let them define what I stand for, so they are relegated to minor influences at best.
Honestly, only cosmic humanism broke the 10% barrier besides secular humanism because cosmic humanism best describes my spirituality. Which is largely distinct from my actual views on economics.
So that said, while secular humanism did end up representing roughly 60% of my perspective, the amount of influence other players had ended up being more different. My spiritual views came more to the forefront, with other influences being relegated to minor roles at best. After all, those other philosophies dont offer a comprehensive worldview worth defining my perspective over, but rather merely add an extra facet to it here and there. I honestly can't see myself defining every aspect of my worldview trough marxism or post modernism, and honestly, most who try seem almost as brainwashed as the Christians.
To be fair perhaps that is the point. The book portrays these other worldviews as competing "religions" and while I dont believe all of them are dogmatic or religious, some of them certainly are, and running afoul of those doctrines can earn you the scorn of their believers. Which explains why I have so many issues getting along with post modernists or marxists. They really are religious zealots at times. Whereas i prefer far less dogmatic perspectives that I can mold to my exact personal preference.
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