Are Ideologies Worth Having?

Unless you have been a blessed hermit living under a massive rock, in which case I must praise you for saving yourself from the current political climate, you have probably seen people talking about how the world works or live their lives based on some seemingly weird assumptions. The answer often comes down to their ideology, or worldview.

What’s the difference?A worldview is a philosophy of life or how you view the world.

An ideology is a set of ideas and ideals that for the basis for how to approach living, usually in political, economic, or social venues.

Worldviews are the foundation of how we see life, and the ideas we have about navigating life spring from this perception. Ideologies are one set of these ideas, and they tend to focus on how we engage with the society around us.

Ideologies exist as a short hand for navigating how the world works. This is a big, complicated planet and we are a complicated species. So to help us make sense of it all, we weave simpler stories, narratives, and ways of approaching things that help us navigate this life.

This can be very useful, as being a polymath (someone who knows the sum total of human knowledge) is not really possible anymore. So having a set of ideas that summarize how to navigate life make it much more attainable for people to come with a strategy for bettering their lives, as each person plays the central role in their own lives.

What does this look like?If, say, you wanted people to move beyond poverty in an agrarian society, you could teach them an ideology based on: law and order, working with others to produce more food, establish a market to sell the excess, maximizing the efficiency of natural resources, and sharing knowledge of how to improve. The cumulative effect could very well cultivate more material wealth for people, allowing them the time to focus on other pursuits such as science or extra time with family.

There are several big problems this approach however. The first is that a given ideology might actually be a collection of bad ideas, thus resulting in a terrible way of navigating life. If someone believes that slashing and burning their way through life is the best way to better themselves, this would be an unsustainable way of living as there is only so much one can destroy before all is lost – not to mention corrosive effects on other people.

Secondly, others may be more logical than slash and burn, but their faults lie in coming from a worldview that doesn’t line up with reality. If one’s perception of how the world works has been skewed in someway, then this would affect secondary decisions they make about how to approach life.

But how do we know what makes an ideology sound or unsound?The answer is to test the ideology with a question: how well does it line up with human nature? As an ideology is typically about engaging other people in society, people are the right metric.

There is, what I like to call, a hierarchy of human nature. The order goes from our most prominent traits as a species down to our least prominent traits. It is as follows:

1. Social and Emotional
2. Logical and Rational
3. Desire for Justice, Equality, Fairness, etc

Now, every ideology makes assumptions about what human nature is. The important point, is what part of human nature does an ideology assume is the base?

For example: capitalism assumes that people are rational actors and act in their own self interest. Whereas communism assumes people want equality, fairness, and working together as a collective is the best way to it.

Both of these have their foundations in human nature, but did you notice that they are based on different levels of human nature? Look at the world around you, which of these two ideas has improved the lives of the most people?

The reason why is that capitalism is based on a higher level of human nature than communism, so therefor capitalism works better. However neither system is based on our number one characteristic: social/emotional. So neither is perfect, but one does outperform the other.

All this means?This leads us to probably the greatest lesson from ideologies: always strive to be aware of the world around you and check your assumptions about life, at least periodically.

This still leaves us with the original question: are ideologies worth having?

Maybe, they can be useful as a tool in life, but perhaps they question worth considering first is: how well does your worldview match with reality?