Absolute Assumption

George Walford: Editorial Notes (56)

UNITED Nations Food and Agriculture Organisation predicts that population will rise from five billion to eight billion by A.D.2020. IS BORIS GOOD ENOUGH? Under this headline Norman Stone recalls that when the tanks stormed into Moscow they stopped at red traffic lights. Memory adds that when the Parisian Communards wanted to open the bank vaults… read more »

George Walford: The Construction of Reality

In his Domain of Ideologies, the foundation document of systematic ideology, Harold Walsby speaks of the work of Jean Piaget. Much of Piaget’s work has been done since Walsby wrote, and here we look at some of his later investigations. Piaget worked as a child psychologist, not an ideologist, and had doubtless never heard of… read more »

Mary Cole: The Systematic Supernatural / Systematic Ideology as a Framework for the Origin, Function, and Alteration of Religion

Winner, 2013 George Walford International Essay Prize. In an evolutionary context, a belief in the supernatural is costly. Evolutionary cost refers to anything that reduces an individual’s eventual reproductive success from what that individual would otherwise achieve. Such cost includes unnecessary practices that either neglect or consume resources that otherwise could be used provision oneself… read more »

George Walford: New Readers Start Here (28)

Revision of June 1987. Ideological Commentary is devoted to the development and exposition of systematic ideology, a theory originated and largely developed by the late Harold Walsby. We do not claim final or exhaustive understanding of it; the formulation that looked like the ultimate last month needs alteration now, and the partial account given here… read more »

Harold Walsby: Atoms and Ideology

The widespread publicity recently given to the atom, as a consequence of public interest in the epoch-making event of the employment of sub-atomic energy as a weapon of war, is naturally devoted only to the direct and more spectacular issues and aspects of the atom’s nature. There is, however, another aspect of the subject –… read more »

George Walford: The Power of the Helpless

Just below the surface of orthodox thinking there hovers the idea that opposites are not only opposed but also in some deep way united. Buddhism assures us that complete attachment brings total unity, anarchists propose restrictions to win freedom, Zen holds emptiness to be fullness, an old saw has it that everything in general is… read more »

Alan Bula, Donald Rooum, John Rowan, Bob Black: Letters

TERMINOLOGICAL EXACTITUDE Sir, Having read Beyond Politics I agree with Zvi Lamm and Freedom that it is lucid, an invisible quality complemented by its almost stark black, white and yellow physical presence. All this, combined with the unfashionably theoretical nature of the subject, made the book a delight to read. Yet, as I neared the… read more »

Jason McQuin and George Walford: From a Reply to a Reply

IC 56 printed a review of Beyond Politics from Anarchy, a Journal of Desire Armed, together with a reply. Anarchy has now reprinted the reply with a response by Jason, one of the editors. Here we present that response together with the reply to it which has been sent. S.I. distinguishes the ideology expressed in… read more »

George Walford: The Birth of the Gods

Studies in systematic ideology tend to centre around politics. There have been forays into wider fields, and Beyond Politics [1] justifies its title by an attempt at tracing the influence of ideology in society at large, but broad areas remain unexplored. Here we take up one feature of the ideology of religion, a subject hardly… read more »

George Walford: The Probable Future of Anarchism

(Abridgment of a talk by George Walford, delivered to the Anarchist Forum on Thursday 13 Nov 86) I don’t have a crystal ball, so I shan’t be talking about the future of anarchism, only its probable future. When we look at the evidence, and think about it, what can we reasonably expect? First of all… read more »

Sidebar