Ideological dangers

Ideologies are dangerous things, very dangerous. Even if they start out with good intentions, I don't know of a one that ever turned out to everyone's benefit. The reason for this is while they start out in "beliefs" they don't necessarily turn into "faiths". That's merely the religious trajectory. Yes, all religions are ideologies, to be sure, but not all ideologies are religions (even if they appear so to non-adherents).

History is full of ideologies, but they taken to new levels (of nefariousness) in the 20th century and are getting even more dangerous in the 21st. You'd think by now we'd recognize what is happening, but apparently we don't. We need to get smart quickly, however, or we could be in for really big trouble.

The classic example of an ideology is Nazism: a troubled connection between fascism (an economic belief) combined with a religious reverence for a certain mythology (a cultural belief) with a good portion of pseudo-science based on language and blood lines (a socio-biological belief). Yes, it has a little bit of everything and came close to destroying the world. Another, more recent one is Communism (though we should properly call this Leninism or Stalinism), which was primarily economic and social in its expression. And, most recently (and we're still on the secular side of things), we have neoliberalism (economic beliefs) or American exceptionalism (cultural beliefs). What they all have in common is a blind belief in certain precepts, none of which are supported or substantiated by hard facts, by hard evidence. What is more, in each of these examples, we are told there is evidence but we are never shown it. We are told that this or that ideology is correct, but the "proof", the demonstrations, the evidence is never, ever specific. It is a general statement, often amounting to "and what's the alternative?". In fact, neoliberalism is based solely on this argument, made most vehemently by Margaret Thatcher: "TINA (there is no alternative)"! Yet, there is plenty of hard evidence as to why any one of these ideologies is simply wrong.

This is, of course, the heart of the matter. As we saw a few posts ago, when our individual beliefs are threatened or challenged, we simply fall back to defending them. We simply disregard (or try to discredit) the evidence. The same is true of our collective beliefs; that is, of our ideologies. This is an all the more dangerous situation in that no one individual is responsible for the consequences, and there always are consequences: with Nazism it was obvious (Holocaust, devastating world war), with Communism too (state terror, the gulag, millions of deaths). The same holds, if we're honest, with neoliberalism (see Pinochet in Chile, the disparity between rich and poor, the economic subjection and killing of, well, millions worldwide) and American exceptionalism (Iraq and Afghan wars, the drone program; that is, millions of deaths). And I don't even need to address religious ideologies; one of our more poignant current problems.

Personally, I think it's hard not to associate massive death with ideologies, and it is obvious that they are massively dangerous. It's time to break ranks. It's time to get our own, individual thoughts and beliefs straight. It is way past due that we take the time to figure out just what it is that we believe.