We have been reading about imperialism throughout our history textbooks, mostly in form of political dominance, and more recently hearing terms like ideological imperialism and economic imperialism in recent times.
It may appear too macroscopic a thing. But, isn't imperialism too deep rooted ... well in day to day lives?
Be in our daily lives, or our job or personal lives.
For example, our jobs and our institutions often teach us to do things in a particular way. Often that way, usually we tend to look at a problem as a set of numbers and form of some model or another, or desperately trying to fit in a model within a situation.
Maybe it is taking over of our thought process by some fixed defined set of once (or many times !) successful things, and expecting it to be a success every time. Probably this often prohibits from taking a larger view of the situation, and limiting ourselves to just that model and solving those 'symptoms'.
Or consider a situation in which just reprimanding might have worked, and using that (probably we cannot think in some other way ... OR ... we have some fear in thinking so!) we try to find a solution ... which often are too shot term, and in doing run it might aggravate a problem.
Another example of intellectual imperialism can be that of ragging in colleges. It is often assumed that this is the way of making the new comers accept their thought process, and making them respect others and 'develop' their ability to deal with the situations, though at a particular level it is a form of ideological imperialism
Intellectual imperialism might be quite similar to ideological imperialism, but I think while the latter deals with our beliefs, and our assumptions, while the former deals with how we solve a particular problem, or deal with a particular situation, which may be somewhat based upon ideological imperialism
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Comments and opinions ?
6 comments:
I beg to differ on your distinction between intellectual and ideaological imperialism. I believe you are talking of ideological imperialism all along. Even apparently as soulless a thing as "problem solving" can have consistent and difficult-to-quantify philosophy - ideology - behind it. Example - any cerebral concept - capitalism, democracy, etc. Closer to Science, Darwinism, or even generic approaches to 'problem solving', involving fairly widely accepted 'systematic' (whose system?) thought processes.
The forceful (or unintentionally forceful, even) one-way propagation of all such philosophies (Right from Euclidean Geometry to Listening to Madonna to speaking in a 'cool' US accent, 'dude'...) can be termed ideological imperialism. In an ideal world there would be no such thing as 'intellectual imperialism', for the ideal 'intellect' would be truly rational and supremely immovable to 'trends' (even forceful trends!). But in the real world, of course, intellect is swayed, and swayed enourmously, by what passes and what has passed before. This may be because "intellect" is not born overnight. It develops, from embryonic thumb-sucking brightness, to childish curiosity and eagerness to discover, to 'mature' and 'well-rounded' adult intellect. The last two adjectives themselves should give you the clue of what we really mean when we say "intellect" - It is, in effect, conformance, not Carbon Copy, same for same conformance to social or scientific 'systems' (that would be termed "sensible" but not "outstanding"!), but conformance to IDEOLOGY, which given what passes presently, and what has passed previosuly, is why we interpret what we do interpret as "intellect".
Amazing obscure as that last comment of mine was, another (perhaps more relevent!) thought just popped up in my mind: If I say ideological imperialism is 'one way' transmission of ideas...or even, say we term it as 'intellectual imperialism' and say it is the one way transmission of ideas, then we must draw the inference that the imperialist does not change. Ever. No idea (or intellect!) from the "subjects" may modify the origical imperial idea...
For a while, this was true, in the conquered subjects (i.e the young Indian in jeans, who listens to Pink Floyd and spouts such wisdom as 'make love, not war, man') would leave the original idealogy (Western Philosphy?) unchanged. For a while, I suppose this was true, but is it today? If it were, would we have Curry Shops in Colchester and Yoga for Yuppies? Is there a distint "dominant" imperialist at play today?
If the 'imperialist' is indeed "inclusive" and open to change, then what business have we calling it an "imperialist" at all. It's like a king saying to his subjects:" You don't have to pay me taxes, you don't have to listen to eveything I say, either, do as you wish, follow some of my orders, reject others if you feel so....You don't even have to calle me 'your highness'!"
So, is the king any different from his subjects?
Yeah, maybe I have mixed the both!!!
But, I think that Intellectual Imperialism is derived from Ideological Imperialism, may be to the extent 80- 90 % (Just an arbit number!)... but probably I don't know which 80 - 90% !!!! . But the difference may come for example when a prof in college says that you need to apply XYZ framework 'only' when given such a case, and NOT anything else. You may then not explore anything else. I think this would be a kind of intellectual Imperialism, parts of it derived from ideological Imperialism
Few more points -
Intellectual imperialism may not necessarily be bad, and many a times it maybe a good thing, but it may be quite limiting at times, especially when you may be 'forced' not to venture outside that fixed mould of thinking!
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