The Absurdity of Ideology

 

An ideological vision is more than a belief in a principle. It is the belief that that that principle is crucial or overriding, so that other principles or even empirical facts must give way when in conflict with it.

 -Thomas Sowell, "Knowledge and Decisions"

Analogy

Imagine that you are young and considering a future career. Your research leads you to Accounting. You find the premier accounting school, apply, and are elated when accepted into the program. At orientation, a senior classmate validates your decision with the following speech:

"Accounting is the most important career. You might ask how can that be? How about a brain surgeon? But where does a brain surgeon perform his best work? In a state-of-the-art operating room, in a hospital. It took money, budgets, and planning to pay for this facility. And who did that? Accountants. Where did that surgeon learn his skills? At a university. How did that place of learning come to exist and continue? Accountants. If you think about anything good in the world, it took Accountants to make it happen."

You're young and excited to be part of this critical community. The department has social events, study groups, and symposiums. With every encounter of your classmates, you hear testimonials of the superiority of accounting. You are unknowingly being indoctrinated. 

You throw yourself into your schoolwork but must take unrelated general education courses. You complain: "This is a distraction from my goal of being a great accountant!" You take a class on a whim that sounds interesting and find you enjoy it more than accounting. You spend extra hours on the coursework and shoot to the top of your class. It's easy...and fun! Your professor takes notice of you and invites you to work with him. You continue with sequential courses and are forced into a challenging situation. Do you change your major? You decide to follow your passion and change your major. You are shunned by the accounting students, but find a new group to associate with. You graduate and land an amazing job. Every day, you can't believe you are getting paid to do what you love.

Still, early indoctrination in accounting makes you doubt your decision. Rationally, you know you did the right thing, but deep down, you question your decision to leave Accounting.

Reality

The above analogy is meant to be a safe analogy: something we can all point at and agree is unsound. But how is this different than what, for example, people think of as the solution to world peace? 

The solution to world peace is Democracy|Mutually Assured Destruction|the UN|Nonviolence |Technology|AI|Social Equality|God|Love.

Each of these "ideas" is an incomplete understanding of reality. Yet, the ideologically inclined person grabs onto an idea that feels good and vehemently argues in favor of his or her idea. In my post, Intellectual Vision: Four Truths and Eightfold Path, I claim that while there is an absolute, objective reality that humans cannot know completely. 

Now, let's make this personal. Identify the ideology most important to you. Notice how you feel when you replace "accounting" in the analogy with your ideology. How do you feel now?

Chase Hughes, a leading behavior expert, said:

... if you can't see anything wrong with the side you agree with, and you can't see anything right with the side that you disagree with, you have been manipulated.

Why the title? "The Absurdity of Ideology." Ignoring empirical facts and a diversity of viewpoints is absurd. Our survival on this planet is due to continual adaptation. How many of the current major conflicts in the world are due to conflicting ideologies?