The Real Problem of “Ideology”
Actually, we ain’t ideological enough…
“You’re an ideologue!” shouts just about everybody these days. Social justice activists criticize the non-woke for upholding an ideology of white supremacy. Conspiracy theorists accuse “normies” of being sheep, blindly following conventional facts and narratives. Atheists criticize religious believers for falling prey to religious dogmas, while both sides of the political aisle criticize each other for being hacky, partisan ideologues. Welcome to the culture wars.
But if we dig a little deeper into this accusation, we unearth some interesting assumptions. The underlying premise of the “ideologue” is that one’s ideological filters prevent them from seeing the truth, or reality as it truly is. “Ideology” acts as a procrustean bed, where data unfit for one’s worldview is distorted to fit one’s preconceived notions or cut out of the picture entirely. “If only you would drop your ideology” says the accuser, “then you would see things as they truly are.”
Except this is misguided and frankly, impossible. The truth is: everyone is ideologically brainwashed to some degree. There is no escaping ideology. Hell, that statement I just made is ideologically laden. Humans rely on heuristics, mental models, and interpretive schemas to consolidate the overwhelming complexity of reality into digestible chunks. Like the…
