Ideology 101

There was a request made when I wrote on Facebook about the genesis and affect of ideology to be put in one blog piece so that it could be shared by those who don't visit Facebook. That made sense to me so this is that piece. It’s long, I make no apologies for that. If I’m going to lay out my thoughts, that is usually what happens. I think long.

Ideology is always a blinder - it limits vision to what fits the reality tunnel dictated by the ideology's worldview. That's how the Nazis believed they were building a "master race" while degrading Germany to unthinkable depravity, how Mao called wholesale extermination of intellectuals a "Cultural Revolution," and how Stalin killed without conscience, millions of working class people to build the "Worker's Paradise."

The nature of ideology is that it defines the world by the theory, it doesn't create the theory by comparing it to the world. In the case of Trumpism, the central beliefs - that the Government is evil and corrupt, that only Trump can "drain the swamp," and that those who support him are the only real, loyal Americans - are the operative realities; the first principles. Anything that questions those tenets is by definition, false.

In the case of Libertarianism, the operative first principle is that all government (except, conveniently, that which protects private property) is illegitimate. Therefore, anything the government does that is beneficial is inherently corruptive. It cannot be otherwise. Therefore, voting for a Libertarian is, to an observer outside their reality tunnel, much like hiring someone to run a nuclear plant that believes that physics is an evil conspiracy.

I hasten to add here, that ideologies of the left are not exempt from this phenomenon. Any set of beliefs that operates as a "first principle," that is to say a moral axiom that must be held if you are to be considered a "good person" will have the same reality-excluding affect.

Now assuming that you are not operating from a position of omniscience, that is to say, you're not G-d, you live in a tunnel. You can only observe so much, know so much, process so much in a moment, or in a lifetime. The vast majority of "the real" is, and must be outside of your knowledge. But certain axioms and habits of thought narrow the reality tunnel to reject anything that doesn't accommodate them, while others expand the reality tunnel - they admit the possibility of new information, and expand perception and understanding to accommodate it.

Ideology is a set of rules that purport to explain how the world "really" works. Ideologies are not organic, they are artificially constructed and propagated. Their genesis comes when some segment of the middle class is suddenly economically displaced. Suddenly, their old, inherited answers and folkways are rendered inoperable, and they search, often desperately, for a new explanation.

Invariably, there is a demagogue to provide them with one - usually self-serving, but always flattering to those who adopt it - you, oh downtrodden one, are the vanguard of the future, the true patriots, the moral folk who will tear down the old order and create the new...

...by doing, and thinking, exactly as I tell you.