Ideological truth is an oxymoron.  We spent the last two centuries debunking ideologies—all the different –isms, like Marxism, Nazism, Zionism, Socialism, Communism, and so forth.  We are still fighting some of those.  They’re like shingles—dormant viruses that awaken from time to time to attack the body politic.

This century we are increasing our understanding of how the human brain works.  It has a marvelous capacity for reason and logic, often creating great thoughts, inventing new technologies, and making works of artistic splendor.  It also has a nasty way of getting its wires crossed, short-circuited, and contradictory to common sense and logic.  The latter problems can often be described as brainwashing when it comes to ideologies.  Brainwashing can be inflicted by others, or it can be self-inflicted.  Ideologies are often the tools for doing both.

Small-minded people become easily addicted to ideologies.  The latter provide a closed system of minutia that’s attractive to such people, easy solutions for problems perceive in their lives, real or imagined, simple solutions that ignore complexities and conflicting relationships to other problems.  An ideology is a one-size-fits-all approach to a small life of parochial thought that allows people to get on with their mundane and sometimes suffering lives.  Ideologies encompass religion; they’re all the opium of the masses.

We can’t be too vocal in our condemnation of power-hungry demagogues who exploit these weaknesses of simple-minded people.  A radical iman preaching jihad is the scum of the earth.  But a Marxist preaching about how wonderful the world will be when workers rule, or a priest telling impoverished peasants their reward will be in the hereafter, these are in the same class and deserve condemnation too.

But those who swallow this malarkey also deserve condemnation.  They are negating their human potential to do and create great things; they are living a life of lazy intellect by accepting ideological truths as fact.  There are no seven virgins awaiting the suicide bomber; there is no worker’s paradise awaiting the Marxists’ followers, only a brutal dictatorship of the proletariat; and there is no place among the angels awaiting the pious and exploited peasant.

To pin one’s hopes on an ideology is the epitome of human stupidity.  It’s like joining a neighborhood gang because your life at home sucks.  It’s escapism, pure and simple, and generally solves nothing.  Often called causes, ideologies are a denial of everything good that can be derived from a sentient brain, one that’s aware of its correct place in the Universe and just enjoying the wonders of existence.

It seems we have come full circle since the Renaissance.  Indeed, many movements today are retrograde, from the relatively harmless and anti-scientific creationism and intelligent design, to political and religious fanaticism, the kind of violent in-your-face confrontation that threatens to send us back to the Dark Ages.  ISIS wants a 6^th-century style caliphate; Marxist-Leninists want to reinstall their debunked ideology and rule the world; radical Christians kill abortion doctors and attack gays, lesbians, and people of other faiths; eco-terrorists pound stakes into trees so loggers die; companies making GMOs which offer a solution to world hunger are picketed and their employees attacked—the list seems endless.

This has to end.  We need a new Renaissance.  We need to mount a counterattack against the dark forces not with violence, but with logic and reason.  We need to celebrate creativity and ingenuity and analyze our problems using logic and reason as spotlights and searchlights for solutions, not the eldritch candlelight provided by ideological “truths.”  That is the only way to move forward.

I’m not optimistic we can do that.  Civilization seems to be spiraling down in the maelstrom of dark waters of mob rule where the person who shouts loudest and waves the biggest stick wins.  Logic and reason lie on their deathbeds.  Small minds drowning in their ideologies are trying to take over the human race.  Please prove me wrong.  Help me restore my optimism.  Forego your ideologies.  Let’s make this world a better place, not one that’s a hellhole of competing ideologies.  I have no use for the latter.  You shouldn’t either.

And so it goes….

This entry was posted on Tuesday, September 15th, 2015 at 4:00 am and is filed under Fundamentalism, Terrorism. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.