I tend towards an almost impossible feat in reality; a historical/cultural evolution of belief change over time which incorporates my own beliefs, analyzing, deconstructing, constructing, accepting, rejecting.
I think that some beliefs are shaped through culture, sometimes inspired initially by an ideology or methodology of some kind.
But then, so often, someone will come along and say, “Back to basics!” and try to throw away some of the cultural beliefs that grew up AROUND an ideological belief system, in hopes of returning to some mythical purity by going “By the Book”. That creates a whole set of _new_ cultural beliefs that, while seemingly based upon the same initial ideology, because one grew and changed naturally with the needs/wants of the “times” as it were, the other forms a new culture that’s somewhat… unnatural, stilted, legalistic, and strict and can sometimes lack in some basic expectations of human respect.
So there can be many source materials for beliefs; even within the same basic ideological system.
By ideological system, I don’t mean religions but any system guided by an overarching ideology.
Yet, is it possible to somehow be “outside” an ideology or set of ideologies?
Well, we seem to all be raised within cultures and accept/reject aspects of that culture through our childhoods and adulthoods.
I think we form our own beliefs, mixing and matching those that are suitable to our personalities generally.
So, in one sense, each belief system is unique; for as humans are unique (part of my belief system that I may need to track down its source) – we each hold our own sets of beliefs, no matter what we may publicly “call ourselves”.
In another, “there’s nothing new under the sun”… and it’s likely an individual’s beliefs could be tracked back through time and turn out to be a combination of source materials.
HOWEVER, perhaps the unique combinations of beliefs in an individual *could* result in a genuine synthesis of a new belief system. Yet, would be new? Ship of Theseus….
What’s genuinely new in the last 100 years or so? That’s a very good question indeed.
If we could not compare it to something that already exists, would we even be able to DESCRIBE something that was entirely new?