Typical Aspects
Key qualities often (not all are always strongly present) shared by religion (particularly cults) and political religion include
- Structural
- differentiation between self and other, and demonisation of other (in theistic religion, the differentiation usually depends on adherence to certain dogmas and social behaviours; in political religion, differentiation may be on grounds such as nationality, social attitudes, or membership in "enemy" political parties, instead)
- a transcendent leadership, either with messianic tendencies, often a charismatic figurehead;
- strong, hierarchical organisational structures
- the control of education, in order to ensure the security, continuation and the veneration of the existing system.
- Belief
- a coherent belief system for imposing symbolic meaning on the external world, with an emphasis on security through faith in the system;
- an intolerance of other ideologies of the same type
- a degree of utopianism
- the belief that the ideology is in some way natural or obvious, so that (at least for certain groups of people) those who reject it are in some way "blind"
- a genuine desire on the part of individuals to convert others to the cause
- a willingness to place ends over means - in particular, a willingness to use violence and fraud
- fatalism - a belief that the ideology will inevitably triumph in the end
Not all of these aspects are present in any one political religion; this is only a list of some common aspects.
Read more about this topic: Political Religion
Famous quotes containing the words typical and/or aspects:
“A building is akin to dogma; it is insolent, like dogma. Whether or no it is permanent, it claims permanence, like a dogma. People ask why we have no typical architecture of the modern world, like impressionism in painting. Surely it is obviously because we have not enough dogmas; we cannot bear to see anything in the sky that is solid and enduring, anything in the sky that does not change like the clouds of the sky.”
—Gilbert Keith Chesterton (1874–1936)
“The power of a text is different when it is read from when it is copied out.... Only the copied text thus commands the soul of him who is occupied with it, whereas the mere reader never discovers the new aspects of his inner self that are opened by the text, that road cut through the interior jungle forever closing behind it: because the reader follows the movement of his mind in the free flight of day-dreaming, whereas the copier submits it to command.”
—Walter Benjamin (1892–1940)