Ideologized Guinea Pigs

Everything goes well until ideology is put first. Now the world must be turned on its side and denied according to a conjured definition to win this religion. New rituals are born, new sins ascribed and assigned, and one must discard reality, make excuses, beg for patience and money, and be silent about obvious questions in order to achieve brave compliance with sacrosanct rules of doctrine.

Absurdity knows no bounds. Most beliefs are far from what they purport, and any belief demanding tolerance and open-mindedness hypocritically shows intolerance of any other beliefs that critically analyze it and shine a light on its actual effects. Where dogma, money, laws, indoctrination (typically as education), and manipulative social norms are necessary to propagate an ideology, you can be sure it conflicts with reality and damages society when people are coerced to obey it, feign acceptance in public, and treat its baseless claims as enlightened and holy.

Because an ideology fails to provide advantage when voluntarily chosen, substantial effort must be used to force compliance, including suppressing serious criticism and evaluation. It is offered as a fanatical promise, lacking all historical basis for claims of benefit, and marketed like a vague beautiful dream. Its proven rivals are slandered and mocked with playground teasing, unconsidered prejudices, and statements of faith, never substantial or reasoned arguments. Fast talking salesman exhort immediate action to garner the great promises of this new ideology, without consideration of what it will displace and disrupt, as if its proponents have somehow stumbled upon a wonderful new way to artificially and at once replace and eclipse natural relations developed gradually and simultaneously in fragile interconnected cooperation over thousands of years.

We must be more than educators talking about abstract concepts. We must be physicians concerned with the practical health of the whole, and philosophers explaining how each part works in small, subtle, and necessary ways to constitute the entirety. A stray ideology at odds with culture, or worse -- reality -- will always be at best dead weight to carry around, and more often an illness that must be quelled and excised.

Throwing away ideas and approaches known to work and replacing them with a lunatic's speculations should not be expected to turn out well, despite toothy smiles and revolutionary hopes. Is the instability and rapid decline of the last 100 years a result of refined traditions improving and strengthening, or is it traceable to unhindered social experiments presumptuously let loose upon us? And if we have not resisted sufficiently to prevent them, yet are aware of the methods and results of these ideologies -- and able to inspect and articulate them clearly -- then we surely remain armed well enough to stand against any attempt to foist delusional experiments and their consequences upon us.