Top-down and bottom-up ideology and what counts as evidence

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All ideology is top-down - but some top-down ideologies include the assumption that only bottom-up factors count as evidence.

These 'bottom-up' ideologies are therefore logically self-refuting when they do not acknowledge that the ideology is itself an exception to its own rule. Nonetheless, the dominant ideologies of our day are exactly of this sort - top-down ideologies which deny the validity of top-down ideologies.

Consequently, human life is (on ideological grounds) chopped-up into discrete phenomena which are (a priori) according independence.

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For example, the sexual revolution has proceeded by chopping human sexuality into discrete sex acts, and by implicitly denying that individual acts of sex add-together to make up a larger issue of sexuality which itself is a part of Life.

When each sexual act is judged as if it was a discrete event, it loses meaning to such an extent that any prohibition seems meaningless. Any sexual act under consideration seems so small and insignificant a thing, that to disallow it seems like nonsense.

Of course, any advocacy or positive evaluation of any sexual act of lifestyle is likewise rendered meaningless; but it is at this point that the logical self-contradictoriness of bottom-up ideology becomes useful - because the frame of evaluation is expanded for positively-valued sex acts (positive value being accorded to anything-other-than sex considered in the normative context of real marriage and family).

So only for sex considered as part of the sexual revolution are matters of happiness/ suffering/ freedom/ equality/ spirituality and religion asserted to be important; whereas for any disapproved sexual act or philosophy the context is narrowed down to the act itself.

However, the choice of approval versus disapproval, the underlying assumption, the matter of where the burden of proof lies - which clearly must originate from a top-down ideology - is never discussed and denied if raised.

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But the problem is much wider than the sexual revolution. It encompasses all of life.

Modern man is alienated; and a reason why he is alienated is that Modern Man has an ideology which assumes that he is alienated; an ideology which explains-away any evidence that he is not alienated.

When Modern Man perceives a pattern to life, perceives that he is not alone in the world but always in communication, and bound to other people by invisible bonds, and that his life has shape and direction; when he perceives that life is not bounded by death or that consciousness is to be found more widely than just among some humans; when modern man perceives a destiny, direction, meaningfulness in his life  - Modern Man is pre-immunized against any and all such experiences with a debunking ideology which explains that any and all such experiences are merely random, subjective, pathological or pathetic examples of wishful thinking.

Having pre-assumed the futility of Life - Modern Man then announces this as a discovery!

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Yes, everybody lives by a top-down ideology; only some people deny the fact; and in doing so deny themselves the opportunity ever to discover their own denial.
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