The problem of ideology
Ideology is to have the answer before you even know the question, and in this it spells disaster.
The modern world is full of ideology; full of ‘theory’ and brash pronouncements about the absolute truth of this or that course of action.
I am beginning to see this all too often among those who would claim the title ‘conservative’ and especially among what, for lack of a better term, would be called the ‘right wing’. Too often is the experiential set aside and the practical needs of a situation ignored in favour of a rationalisation divorced from reality. The lockdown, for example, was not based on experiential evidence but on the unfortunately rather limited logic of the human; we didn’t know it would work we just assumed it would because it sounded like it made sense. It was the equivalent of jumping out of a plane without a parachute because it would get you to your destination quicker.
To have a rigid ideology is to bind yourself in intellectual chains, it disconnects you from the world that you need to act in and to govern to the point that it becomes so personalised that anyone else would find your reality unrecognisable. Ideology is to have the answer before you even know the question, and in this it spells disaster. Many Trump supporters are so ideological they have managed to export their ideology as a person and, just as the communists did to Stalin or Mao, create a cult of personality around him so strong that the assault of reality becomes a distant whisper heard through the thick walls of a bomb shelter.
Once you start to reach this level of ideological commitment you can be made to believe anything; as proven by the US election.The correct response to the rise of an opposing ideology is not to entrench yourself in an ideology of your own but instead to reject the entire concept altogether. I am a free thinking individual, as the facts change so does my mind, so what use do I have of ideology?
Conservatives have become far too ideological. They have responded to a more ideological left tit-for-tat instead of recognising no one narrow system of thought or set of opinions can prevail against the near endless possibilities that the continued existence of the Human race is bound to create. We should equip ourselves with tools to gather the necessary information we need, and then to develop the good judgement necessary to use that information.
Sometimes the criticisms from the Left are valid, and it is not heresy to accept that. In fact, even sweeping terms like the ‘Left’ should probably be avoided. We are not conservatives because we wish to install our ideology on the world, we are conservatives because we wish to install the world onto our ideology.
