| | Aphorisms are intended to convey levels of meaning, giving you something to ponder, worry, or enjoy.
"Never let your sense of morals prevent you from doing what is right." -- Robert Heinlein.
We on RoR have already rejected that. An objective morality is non-contradictory at the conceptual level. Furthermore, if you are psychologically integrated, then there is no emotional conflict to moral action. That all aside, we know that we do experience these conflicts when life brings new challenges. The aphorism reminds us to follow our heads, not our hearts. Make of it what you will, or not.
I am currently reading, The Picture of Dorian Gray. Sir Henry is the author's viewpoint character and the dialog is dense with aphorisms. After a while, they become uninteresting, like the toys in a gumball machine, many, pretty and cheap. (You can see how infectious such writing is.)
I mention that in comparison with this because it is very dense. We - and I mean we on RoR, as well as the broad culture - actually accept Mannheim's redefinition of "ideology." We have a broad definition: any system of ideas to explain complex social phenomena. Before Mannheim, however, "ideology" was specifically the Marxist explanation of how the capitalist ruling class justified itself. Ideology replaced religion. Back then, to speak of "socialist ideology" would have been to speak of a "secular religion." You would have needed to explain yourself, as your audience would have perceived an internal contradiction.
As I read the Wikipedia biography, I found this: "The quite different German and English versions of the book figure in reappraisals of Mannheim initiated by new textual discoveries and republications." Therefore, whether in this statement Mannheim was being pithy or mistranslated is not clear to me. Either way, it just comes across as hopelessly pessimistic.
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[I]deology signifies a phenomenon intermediate between a simple lie at one pole, and an error, which is the result of a distorted and faulty conceptual apparatus, at the other.
