Calling all anti-ideologists

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This is very true I agree.

A very good point.

human life is complicated. It simply will not reduce to a set of clear rules, axioms or principles.

ruveyn

We have similar social rules as our animal friends do.

I think it is not only important which ideology. It is also important to be open to other ideas.
A idea or a political theory should not degenerate into an idiotic belief.
You should be careful, in many discussions people don't think that something is better,
no they believe it. (Belief don't mean to know something)
There should be also still minorities which supported ideologies which have failed.
Nobody knows which ideas are needed in the future.
It is easy to overtake a idea from another person or book. But it is not so easy to invent own ideas.
So nearly every ideology is at the right time useful, when this ideology or idea respects the fundamental human rights.
Also many ideologies are reactions from other ideologies. (capitalism causes communism)
I think it is important to develope a new idea about a system with freedom, social security, resource conservation and
intelligent and fast progress. (social security and freedom not mutually exclusive themselves)
I think responsible freedom is the best ideology.

This is untrue, the most obvious case being the Soviet economic boom of the 1930s, with expansion continuing until the 1970s, which was purely socialist. (OK, fine, 95% socialism and 5% random oppression.)

I think the main question is not about ideology, but about dogmatism. True virtue would be in an intellectually honest approach to societal problems -- admit that maybe a policy has been proven wrong and ill-founded, empirically or theoretically, at least in a specific context.



I would even go so far as to say that they have no reason to want to learn or know stuff. What is the purpose of a deep knowledge of economics, politics, sociology, etc., to a salesclerk, taxi driver or accountant? It is not like casting one of millions of ballots every four years will change anything anyway. Of course, education is beneficial, but not for that "enabling democracy" non-sense, just because it is sound management of human capital.

I don't think elections really matter that much. They only change for a few years some of the head of government, but whatever the elected officials want to do generally does not happen, and whatever they actually achieve rarely has any real consequence. Under them, the same unelected fonctionnaries remain who take care of the important issues. In any case, politicians are mostly drawn from the same social groups of the educated upper middle class or upper class. Rarely anything gets done at the top by any government that has any real consequence, except from occasionnal adequate or inadequate crisis management and foreign policy decisions.

To me, elections are just a way to give the general population a small part of power within the overall process, with the main purpose of avoiding violent revolts and, very rarely, preventing too obviously misguided and unfair policies. That it achieves successfully. To me, democracy is one of the worst possible systems -- thank God I don't live under it!

I guess the general opinion of the comments is how this is over "dogmatic ideology" vs "non-dogmatic ideology." At least that's what I get out of this thread, and for the most part we agree that non dogmatic is better. I'll dogmatically agree with that

However, memetics has taught us, that non-dogmatic ideology will not persist as a viable ideology, it doesn't resist change and only alter when forced to. It doesn't try to replicate itself and spread across the world the way the most dogmatic ideologies do, thus it will never take foothold and maintain the power base. Instead it will appear here and there and all over the place as intelligent people put forward ideas and achieve compromises, but then emotion and tradition and other factors come in and the upstart ideas fizzle out and die.

Dreaming of a non-dogmatic social structure, government, way of life....
It's a pipe dream, like the sci fi stories of colonizing other planets, like heaven, like endless resources.... It's not possible.

Edited to add: It can also be viewed in light of energy law and entropy. Unless their is a force brought to bear to force things toward order, everything will tend toward entropy or randomness. If the idea system/memeplex/ideology/paradigm doesn't hold onto it's ideas dogmatically, then as it spreads out, it doesn't in any way or shape resemble the original idea, and you're left with nothing coherent. And as the idea doesn't exist "en masse" and is instead hundreds of different ideas, it dies out, and is replaced with some coherent structured idea (memetically superior) ideology.

I'm pretty much anti-ideologist, I think ideology can be close to delusion.

Not all ideology are a religious base their are plenty of ideologys based on poltical thinking.

When ideas get in the way of facts, a world of hurt is born.

ruveyn

That is true but some facts can be disprooven.

A fact is a world state. It is that which is.

ruveyn

That made perfect sense don't got a arguement for it.

That is not the point. Most biblical prescriptions are pretty sensible (or were a few thousand years ago): the Ten Commandments are just a good way to live in society, the Jewish and Muslim food restrictions are basically the ancient version of the American FDA, and obviously there is nothing wrong with the "love thy neighbour" principle. In the same way, modern ideologies are based on a bunch of long dead Enlightened philosophers and 19th and 20th century social scientists, living in a very different context and writing about very different issues. Taken literally, they are only slightly more appropriate than the Bible, the "slightly more" being mostly a consequence of the clearer, less metaphorical style.

The problem is with dogmatic enforcement of those principles, no matter what reality has to say, no matter what these principles are or whence they come.