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Message: <blockquote data-quote="darkbard" data-source="post: 7396465" data-attributes="member: 1282">Ideology doesn't simply mean any belief a person holds. Ideology means, in literary critic Terry Eagleton's definition, "The largely concealed structure of values which informs and underlies our factual statements[, ...] the ways in which what we say and believe connects with the power-structure and power-relations of the society we live in" (my emphasis).I was raised in a western (now global) narrative that has a vested interest in maintaining a narrative of progress. I have questioned that narrative, critically, and done a lot of study that has led me to different conclusions.Here is what Shidaku wrote:These are the terms those living within a roughly centralized state structure ("civilization") use to denigrate those outside of one. Often accompanying such terms (less knowledgable, in general) are claims of naivete (in the sense of an infantalizing pureness or goodness), illiteracy (as an explanation for lack of knowledge), and "savagery" (as being beyond the refinements of "civilization"). If these do not characterize shidaku's perspectives, then I publicly apologize. But when one makes vague and blanket statements claiming one group is better than another, (the average person today knows more than even the smartest person from 5000 years ago, in this example), the person making such a statement is setting themselves up for misunderstanding.My reason for referencing Plato, perhaps unclear, is that such claims of more or less knowledgable are ludicrous. Literacy no more decreased individual human knowledge, in toto, than living in our modern world increases it over our forebears! It's a question of different kinds of knowledge, not quantity of knowledge. AbdulAlhazred addressed this already, above.I have absolutely no desire for some kind of battle over this issue, derailing this thread further. As I say above, our knowledge today is different. I will absolutely agree if you want to say that much of our contemporary knowledge is more scientific, in the sense of repeatability and demonstrability, even that it is more *accurate* as a result, but that, again, is not a question of amount but kind.</blockquote>

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