A Primer on Ideology

I wanted to write today about something that is super important to realize and that really grinds my gears about human interactions; ideology politics.

Ideology politics is the process of describing, evaluating, and interacting with a set of beliefs that is held by a population.

An ideology typically has a criteria (my own arbitrary criteria):

1. A set of beliefs about the nature of reality/existence/humanity.

2. A justification for the beliefs that is some form of ultimate authority or ultimate truth of reality/existence/humanity.

3. (The most important) The insistence that this ideology is the "true" ideology, justified by the ultimate authority, and any deviation is morally evil.

4. There are ways to publicly or psychologically shame and/or guilt someone who is not a part of the ideology into either acceptance of the ideology or to be ostracized from the group. (or killed, depending on the ideology)

Christianity, Judaism, Islam, Buddhism, Hinduism, Sihkism, Atheism, Agnosticism, Capitalism, Communism, Socialism, Tribalism, Black Culture, White Culture, Asian Culture, Feminism, Patriotism, Misogyny, Patriarchy, Matriarchy, Rape Culture, Queer Culture, Anarchy, Libertarianism, Environmentalism, Scientific method, Spirituality, Supernatural occurrences, Existentialism, Pragmatism, Rationalism, Empiricism, Stoicism, Absurdism, etc. etc. etc.

I tried to capture as broad of groups as I could. This list will Never be exhausted because Humans will come up with a plethora of ideologies as long as they exist.

The important thing to remember is that, at the basic level, every person who ascribes to an ideology believes they are right.

This doesn't mean that they are right. It doesn't mean they are wrong. No matter how "smart" or "enlightened" you are, you MUST have an ideology because it is necessary to interact with the world in a way that continues to allow you to exist.

(The irony is that saying that you MUST have an ideology is, in itself, and ideology. But conversely, saying that you DO NOT have an ideology is also an ideology.)

Ideology is impossible to escape. It is a conditioning tool used by the groups you grew up with to create group stability.

Think: if the last 1500 people on earth disagreed like Democrats and Republicans do nowadays, would they survive to propagate the species if they had all of the tools and technology of 30,000 b.c.?

The danger of ideology, though, is that it doesn't come with "undo" instructions. Most people don't know how to remove their old ideology and accept a new one. Even then, they are still at the mercy of the dominant group if they refuse to keep the old ideology.

So what? What does all of this mean? Think of Ideology like glasses; (to blatantly steal from "A Pervert's Guide to Ideology" by Slavoj Zizek) You literally read "objective" phenomena through the lens of your ideology.

A movie is a movie. A communist could see it as a metaphor for how global capitalism is taking over the world. A capitalist could see it as how an individual, through their labor and hard-work, befriends and empowers the people around them to create a better future. Which one is right?

(Even though the creator may have a certain slant they were going for, it won't change the ability of others to see something different)

In today's day and age, black lives matter versus all lives matter versus blue lives matter. Trump versus Hillary versus Gary Johnson versus Vermin Supreme. America versus ISIS versus the rest of the western world versus Russia?

Ideology is abundant, adamant in its own "rightness", uncaring of the body count it produces, and steadfast in its self-propogation. But it's not a single ideology, but rather, an intricate web of ideas that weave themselves across our souls, crawl into our brain, craft our values, and create action based on our "rightness". Ideology is an "us" thing.