Comparison with philosophies and religions

1. What ideonology is in classical terms

The generic definition: a consequentialist, causal theory of significance, not of morality and not of well-being.

Consequentialist — it counts consequences.
Causal — credit runs along the chain of causes with damping.
Not about well-being — the currency is not happiness but the shift of thought. One can influence greatly and make nobody happy.
A theory of significance — it answers "did you matter at all", not "what is the meaning": the second question is moved to the Meaning page. The sign is a separate, optional module.

2. Closest relatives

Diotima's speech in Plato's Symposium. All people want immortality, and there is a ladder: some beget children of the body, others fame through deeds, and the highest beget "children of the soul" (Homer, Hesiod, Lycurgus, Solon), and the children of the soul are more immortal. The closest classical relative.
Peirce's pragmatism. The meaning of a concept equals the sum of its practical consequences. Ideonology applies this maxim not to a concept but to a biography. The unit of impact, the peirce, is named after him.
Dawkins's memetics. A meme is the unit of cultural transmission from head to head. An ideon is a meme that has acquired a magnitude.
Effective altruism. The principle of irreplaceability is taken from there almost verbatim: "don't become a doctor, you will be replaced; go where you are counterfactually necessary".
Tolstoy, the epilogue of War and Peace. How to distribute the cause of a historical event among millions of wills. Napoleon gets almost nothing; it all goes to the soldiers. This is a dispute about the rate of damping, and Tolstoy stands for very slow damping toward the masses. The chief opponent on the coefficient.
Nozick, Philosophical Explanations. Whether "leaving a trace" confers meaning. An ideon is a trace with a dimension.
Scheffler, Death and the Afterlife. The meaning of our activity depends on there being people after us. This follows automatically: no future heads, no minutes.
Hegel, the cunning of reason. World-historical individuals move the spirit without understanding what they do. The sign is set by the direction of history, not by welfare.
Plotinus, emanation. Influence flows out from the source and weakens with every step. Damping along the chain seventeen centuries before PageRank.
The three imperishables (三不朽). The Zuo Zhuan, 5th century BC: to establish virtue, deeds and words — that which does not fade, as opposed to the continuation of the line. Virtue is sign and coherence, deeds are the impact of actions, words are the impact of ideons with the longest chain.
Borges, "The Immortal". Homer, living forever, forgets that he is Homer. The theorem on the anonymity of the immortals in the form of a story.

Put together: ideonology is Peirce's pragmatism applied to a life, with memetics as the unit, the Shapley value as the bookkeeping, and Tolstoy as the opponent on the coefficient.

What the classical schools propose to do with impact — maximize it, direct it, bring it to zero — is covered on the Meaning page; what they do with the person's own part of their own minute is on the Selfhood page.

3. Schools and religions

Two auxiliary terms. The arbiter is who assigns the sign and keeps the account. The horizon is when the account closes. Abbreviations: M — minutes, G — degrees, I — impact.

The table is deliberately simplified: each row reduces to one formula a tradition with millennia of history, internal disputes and many branches, and none of them describes itself this way. It is a translation into the language of the theory, not a judgment on faith; everything is in fact more complicated, and where the translation offends, the translator is at fault.

School	Goal	Bet	Arbiter	Horizon	In the language of ideons
Christianity	Personal parity: give in proportion to what was received	G	God	Last Judgment	The only school that keeps the account from the incoming side: the widow's mite outweighs the gifts of the rich, and ten talents are demanded of the one who received ten. "Let not thy left hand know" is a renunciation of the name while keeping the content. "Neighbour" is the circle widened to everyone. Church and liturgy are re-emission on schedule; Paul holds a founder's share comparable to Jesus's own. Catholics keep parity by works, Protestants by faith, that is by intention.
Islam	+I by intention ("deeds are by intentions")	M and G	Allah	Judgment	Sadaqah jariyah: deeds that yield reward after death (a well, a book, a raised child) are a direct recognition of the chain with slow damping. Isnad is name-by-name accounting of the chain of transmission.
Judaism	+I, a collective account	G	God	The coming of the Messiah	Zekhut avot: the merits of the fathers are credited to the descendants; impact flows downward too. The Talmud cites "in the name of Rabbi X", a bookkeeping of sources. Tikkun olam: to repair the world is to shift.
Buddhism	0 sankharas	neither M nor G	Automatic (karma without a judge)	Exit from samsara	The bodhisattva: maximum impact in order to bring others to zero. Renouncing the account itself becomes the largest account.
Hinduism (karma yoga)	I without attachment to fruits	G	Automatic and dharma	Moksha	"Act without desiring the fruits" is Stoicism with reincarnation: the horizon is not one life but a series. The expected impact depends on one's role.
Confucianism	+I by example	G through imitation	Tradition, ancestors	The lineage	The only school with explicit vertical bookkeeping: the ancestor cult is the recognition of the parents' share. Ritual is the carrier of slow damping.
Taoism	max G at zero credit	G	Nobody	None	Wu wei: the best ruler is the one the people barely know exists. Impact without attribution, the only school that renounces credit without renouncing influence.
Homeric heroism	max M posthumously	M	Bards, memory	Never	Achilles chooses a short life and eternal fame, pure magnitude: only the minutes of others' thought about you after death count. Sign is irrelevant: Achilles is remembered for his wrath too.
Stoicism	+I by intention, indifference to magnitude	—	One's own reason	Death	The result is not in your power, so the account is by intention only. Fame is an echo of an echo.
Kant	+I by intention	—	The categorical imperative	Death	Shifting someone's thought without their rational consent is using a person as a means. Impact is morally neutral; the will is not.
Utilitarianism, EA, longtermism	+I by result	M × G	Calculation	Never	The currency is welfare, not thought. Irreplaceability is taken from here. Longtermism is zero damping forward: the minutes of the 30th century count like today's.
Nietzsche	max \|I\|, sign rejected	G	Oneself	Eternal recurrence	The will to power is magnitude. The Übermensch creates degrees, the last man consumes minutes.
Marxism	+I along the direction of history	M (the masses)	History, class	Communism	"Philosophers have interpreted the world; the point is to change it": the magnitude of impact declared the criterion. Damping toward the masses, as in Tolstoy, with Lenin's amendment: a vanguard with high G.
Liberalism	max free exchange of I	M with voluntary G	The marketplace of ideas	None	Others' degrees may be shifted only by persuasion and with consent: a coerced degree does not count. Every head is a sovereign account.
Existentialism	The sign is chosen by oneself	—	Nobody	Death	Sartre: "in choosing for myself, I choose for all", every act is a broadcast.

What stands out:

The vertical chain (parents, ancestors) is explicitly kept only by Confucianism and Judaism, and Judaism in both directions.
Only Christianity measures from the incoming account: the demand is in proportion to what was received, not in absolute terms. Grace then lifts the person's guilt before the arbiter, not the sign of their trace: the minutes stay with whoever owned them.
Taoism alone separates influence from credit: maximum degrees while renouncing attribution. A third position between Nietzsche and the Buddha.

4. Meditation

Meditation changes only your own minutes without touching anyone else's. By the definition of the unit it yields zero impact. Its value is of a different kind: it raises the coherence of the emitter, that is, the match between what you want to shift and what you actually shift. It reduces noise and gives access to your own intention, without which the account by intention is unmeasurable even for yourself. The Buddha meditated and then collected one of the largest accounts in history: a workshop, not a product. The only axis where there is no zero-sum game.