Ideas & Ideology

“Ideologies are like crippled religions.” — Jordan Peterson 

Around the same age I got my driver’s license I also became interested in politics. I explored the physical world and the world of ideas at once. And what an exciting time to do so– the 2016 election was in full swing. All my conscious life I had seen corporate culture slowly erode individual expression in the name of equality as vague abstraction, and during the election cycle of Donald Trump I noticed a new zeitgeist. 

People were vehemently angry, both on the left and right– name calling on the debate stage and in everyday life became normal. Everyone was helplessly swept up into the mimetic frenzy. Meme warfare exploded, and ideas could now be packaged, distributed, and communicated more readily than ever. Before I could make sense of any of it, I was inundated with constant streams of sound bytes, jokes, and symbols all vying for my ideological adherence. How to know what to believe? 

Humor seemed to follow truth, for the most part, and I comforted myself in this fact. The adults around me were confused by what to me and my peers seemed like a first language. Their willingness to uphold status quo narratives left them completely bewildered by our guerilla tactics. And it was just fun to troll prudish school marm types. 

I began to follow many pundits from all orientations. I noticed a pattern– I was drawn to pundits based not on any sort of ideological trend (though I admit I skewed right), but rather their level of awareness. There were those who seemed unable to speak or civilly debate anyone across the aisle, and others who seemed capable of having conversations with anyone and who could admit deficiencies in their expertise. I started to notice that the more rigid and devoid of nuance the thinker, the greater likelihood that they would at some point in time be embarrassed. My only goal as a teenager was to always be right and never to be embarrassed. 

I would often engage in petty debates wherein I found myself, due to a lack of critical thought, parroting the slogans of my party to my eventual embarrassment When pressed further, the arguments fell apart. Digging deeper, I began to understand that the disagreements playing out in our current society could be traced back thousands of years. I became dizzy. 

I went to college. I let ideas play out. I became hopelessly depressed, and more nihilistic than ever. The excitement of the 2016 election had faded; dunking on my ideological opponents became stale. I even began to resent those that agreed with me, secretly knowing what it was that they hid below their belief. The 2020 election rolled around, and I couldn’t get myself to care about Trump or Biden. There was still that vitriol from the last election, only this time more manufactured, derivative, tired, redundant. I didn’t vote, because I didn’t believe that any difference was to be made in the realm of democratic politics. 

 I became politically agnostic. “What is truth?” said Pilate. It seemed that rational arguments only got one so far. My adolescent mind, having taken an interest in Friedrich Nietzsche, began to believe that power was what allowed one to define what was considered good or evil. This emboldened me to act more nobly than I had, but solely for my own benefit. I still did not see how critically blind I was, and the cliff’s edge was approaching. 

I finished college. I searched for a job but struggled to find anything that didn’t seem soul-crushing. I stayed with my parents for a time, asking them continually for advice on career direction. They had little in the way of advice– which they aren’t to blame for– because the world now is so different. Everything changes so fast that it is impossible for one generation to lean entirely on the wisdom of the former. But to not lean at all is equally ruinous– by now we all know that the true way is narrow. 

I found a job. I started working. I read as many technical, historical, business, and philosophical texts as I could get my hands on. I wanted so badly not to be a fool, or to fall back into the ideological traps I had only narrowly escaped. I sought out mentors that disagreed with one another, and even disagreed with me and my most deeply held convictions. Then, I went and tested their theories for myself. I practiced meditation, journaling, vlogging, gymnastics, prayer, all in an attempt to gain more perspective on myself and my being. Shallow understandings of myself and reality were necessary sacrifices. 

Looking back I noticed a pattern. That was, everytime I allowed a candidate or a party or a person or an institution to have all the answers for me I stumbled– conversely, everytime I allowed myself to believe I had all the answers for myself already, I stumbled even further. 

What’s necessary at all times is a certain attention: to trends, to self, to one’s attention. Everytime I allowed myself to be lured into prideful conceit, or fantasies of an earthly kingdom, or political revolution aimed toward utopia, I made everything worse for myself and the world. 

Do you know why humility is the greatest virtue? Because it is the opposite of the most dangerous sin, pride. One is an openness to receiving the truth, and the other is a willful blindness to it. As soon as you say to yourself, “I have grown  tired, I resent truth seeking– give me what is expedient,” you have signed away your freedom of thought.