The daughter calls for a conversation, we've had a few of these, a bit of light banter followed by: "So, what to you think of...". I did really well in English 20 and 30 this year, now she's on to Social Studies. I don't mind, it forces me to think a bit...
..."the most important or transformative ideologies have been...", or words to that effect. This is good as I haven't given it a great deal of thought, but, running through it with her we come to 3: Agriculture, Monotheism, and Monogamy. In that order.
- Agriculture - in that we go from being one with nature to harnessing nature, agriculture allows for the growth of cities and specialization by groups in mining, metallurgy, pottery, allows for the arts, the development of science, the accumulation (for better or worse) of wealth and power, in short - we went from being one with the land to being it's master, which is as transformative an ideology as there could possibly be.
- Monotheism - 1 God. We take a pile of errors - praying to various deities, and combine them to make 1 error. 1 error, (presumptive of me - I know, maybe, then, not an error) - is better than many, and this is a huge evolution in thought - if 1 God created the world, we might by that discern the rules by which he created it; if many gods created the world there might then be many rules - as many, conceivably, as there are people - this small change in ideology makes a big difference in how we understand the world.
- Monogamy - the equal distribution of resources (women), the earliest form of Communism. 1 woman for every pot, as it were. This had the effect of reducing wars (no longer was there are surplus of idle manpower that might usurp a kings position, hence wars were a good idea to keep down the eligible competition) - and allowed civilization to proceed. It's an easy thing to shrug, but without monogamy there would be no debate about equal rights for women - so - clearly I should have 50% of the populations support right there!
I could think about this a lot more and make better arguments, revise, tinker, maybe even abandon some ideas in favor of others, but - hey, it's not my assignment.
After this conversation she'll call her brother, and sound him out with the same questions, then counter with "her" thoughts, essentially rephrasing my own, but giving him an "A" for effort...