If We Set Aside Ideology, Is There Anything We Can Agree On?

Just the experiment of setting aside ideological certainties for a moment would be instructive.

Humans are hard-wired to prefer simplicity over complexity, and this is the foundation of ideology, which like mythology takes a complex world and radically simplifies it to an easily digestible construct. (I tease all this apart in my book The Mythology of Progress.)

Being social animals, humans are also hard-wired to quickly form loyalties to groups and gravitate to one camp. Very few football fans (if any) have zero loyalty to any team and have zero emotional stake (i.e. there's no team they hope loses and none they hope will win).

Uncertainty generates anxiety, and so we settle the real world's many uncertainties with internal certainty: an ideology is a simple sketch of how the world works, and we will defend this emotionally powerful construct even as evidence piles up that it doesn't accurately map all of the world's complexities. We will deny, rationalize and cherry-pick examples to "prove" our ideological certainties map the real world.

The problem with radically simplified constructs like mythologies and ideologies is they cannot possibly map the world accurately as complex, interactive systems don't reduce down to a simplified construct. So every ideological construct ends up denying, rationalizing and cherry-picking examples to cover the inherent weaknesses of simplifying the world into bite-sized constructs.

Our intense drive to establish and nurture loyalties leads to emotionally satisfying but often counter-productive convolutions, such as any enemy of my enemy is my friend and any friend of my enemy is my enemy.

The problems with ideological constructs are magnified in tumultuous times as ideologies map a rapidly shrinking share of the real world. The internally coherent ideology drifts further into incoherence, and our natural defense is not to become more open-minded (i.e. actively embrace uncertainty and entertain new ideas) but to cling even harder to the simplified certainties that generate our internal sense of self and certainty.

Since the faithful of competing ideologies are pursuing the same strategy to reduce anxiety, our loyalties clash with increasing intensity. That possibility that all the ideologies claiming to map the real world are increasingly detached from real-world dynamics doesn't occur to any true believer in any camp, for each believer remains confident (and when pushed, becomes ever more adamant) that their ideology is the one true construct that faithfully maps all of the real world's immense complexity.

Such is the power of these internally coherent constructs that we don't see them as belief structures, we see them as the bedrock of truth. We don't recognize our ideological beliefs as beliefs open to question, and so when challenged, we respond defensively: Ideology? What ideology? What I'm saying is the truth. Yes, true to us, but an accurate account / map of all the world's complexity? No.

To each believer in an ideology, the problem isn't that their ideology is not mapping the real world with sufficient accuracy to successfully navigate increasingly stormy seas. The problem is the other ideologies are obstructing our solutions, which are guaranteed to work if pursued with absolute purity. Compromises introduce fatal impurities and so of course they fail to fix what's broken.

If only all those misguided souls abandoned their wrong-headed beliefs and joined our temple, then we'd clear up all the real-world problems in no time. But alas, the fools insist on clinging to their completely misguided faith in false gods.

In this increasingly bitter environment, up becomes down and vice versa. Common sense--by definition, an attempt to map real world complexities based on practicalities rather than internally coherent constructs and loyalties--is tossed aside in favor of doubling down on the simplified precepts of the ideology.

We end up arguing about internally coherent simplifications, none of which do a productive job of mapping the real world, and accusations and raw emotions replace rationality. We are raging, spittle flying, demanding everyone agree with us that 100 angels can dance on the head of pin, not 10 and not 1,000.

How can we trust anyone who so adamantly clings to such wrong-headed ideas? We can't, so social trust plummets accordingly.



Those without any ideological faith watch the emotional fireworks with stunned amazement. So you think Dallas should be nuked because you hate the Cowboys? Um, okay.... But does nuking the Cowboys really clear your team's path to the Super Bowl?

The more the real world unravels into complex uncertainties, the greater our need to cling to certainties as the source of our internal security and hope. Rather than see the failure of all internally coherent but increasingly incoherent constructs to map the real world as the core problem, we see those with different ideological beliefs as the problem.

If we managed to set all ideological beliefs and constructs aside for a brief moment, is there anything we might agree on? As a thought experiment, imagine an AI project tasked with providing solutions to the core threats to our future stability and security. Is there anything the program might suggest that we could agree on?

How about accountability and transparency? Can we agree on the practical value of making those wielding power accountable for their actions and decisions? Can anyone contest the practicality of demanding an honest, transparent, accurate accounting of public funds and publicly traded private-sector enterprises? Can anyone contest that transparency is the foundation of sound decision-making?

Just the experiment of setting aside ideological certainties for a moment would be instructive. The irony here is the more the real world changes in ways that don't map simplistic ideologies, the greater our urgency to cling even harder to the simplicities we've invested with our identity and loyalty, and the stronger our instinct to lash out at anyone who disagrees with us, as if their disagreement is the problem, rather than the real-world complexities that no simple construct can map with any functional utility.

Rather than nuking Dallas, maybe finding some sort of practical, common-sense middle ground might be the wiser course, even though it goes against every fiber of our hard-wired instincts to circle the wagons to defend the one true construct and declare those who disagree as the problem.

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