What's wrong with ideology?

Ideological Thinking

It seems that we all look for simple answers. We want simple, consistent models of how the world works so that we have guidance in making decisions about how to solve problems. A set of heuristics that give us instant solutions are the ticket. We don't need to waste any time thinking the situation through carefully. We just apply our rules of thumb and voila, problem solved.

Quite honestly, the strategy of learning heuristics that could be applied in the vast majority of life situations made a lot of sense back at the beginning of the Holocene. Life was a whole lot simpler and decisions did not involve a complex set of options. Humans evolved the capacity to take mental shortcuts because most real decisions required very quick responses. Our ability to learn heuristics was an ideal substitute for instincts, which are hard wired into the brain. Learning means adaptability. Should things substantially change we retain the ability to revise our rules as needed.

What makes this capacity truly efficient is the ability to abstract a whole lot of little situation-response rules into an overarching general rule (or small set of rules). This is a wonderful mnemonic device that helps one organize all those rules and gain access to them by association with the 'master' rule. One size fits all.

Hence was born the basis for ideological thinking. Long ago, when the world was much simpler, the rule base could easily be linked to reality and every locality occupied by humans would provide its own flavor of rules. Ultimately these learned rules were linked to survival instincts to be sure. Always, the first rule is to stay alive. That is followed by what Abraham Maslow called the Hierarchy of Needs. At the base of this hierarchy are our physiological needs that must be met or we die. Higher up are more, what might be called, discretionary needs. These are psychological, though still based on brain wiring, and are less immediate in requiring fulfillment. At the top of this hierarchy lie the needs that relate to those aspects that make us human (vs. needs similar to all other animals) and there is where we start running into trouble.

Starting in the middle of the hierarchy with the need for love and belonging humans have so much more flexibility in terms of how these needs can be met and, hence, different interpretations about what it means to fulfill them. Going up the hierarchy we find needs for esteem and self-actualization where each of us is driven to assert our autonomy in various ways, but basically to establish our individuality. Here is where the combination of heuristic rule following and human nature start to get into trouble. Even though the highest levels of the diagram in the above linked Wikipedia article contain terms like "lack of prejudice" and "acceptance of facts", how these ideas are actualized can be quite interesting. Played against two other major factors in human nature, the in-group/out-group categorization process and the esteem held for authorities, we humans tend to believe that what we believe as our heuristics are without prejudice and represent the facts. Why? Our wise men told us so, and those others aren't as smart as we are.

Today the world is unimaginably complex. And with 24/7 media coverage of the whole globe all of that complexity comes crashing down on each of us more or less continuously. Our capacity to assemble a small set of simple rules that make sense in light of our experienced reality is taxed beyond the breaking point.

One more aspect of human nature combined with the above leads to what we recognize as ideological thinking. Every person tends to have dominant personality traits that appear to be highly heritable and relatively stable over a lifetime. Such traits, and the personalities that arise from them, give people propensities in a variety of dimensions. For example one might be extroverted and open to new experience and risk taking. Such a personality can give rise to a propensity toward learning heuristics that include 'nothing ventured, nothing gained'. Others, less extroverted, more closed to new experiences, and risk averse might adopt rules such as, 'better safe than sorry.' The latter might give rise to a general heuristic that we would recognize as conservatism, while the former might be considered more progressive.

When Ideological Worlds Collide

Another aspect of human mentation is the degree to which we commit to our beliefs. It is, of course, one thing to be convinced of some facts or relations based on scientific evidence (yet always held provisionally) versus conviction based on what an "authority" claims. The scare quotes are used here to indicate that there are authorities and then there are authorities! The kind that causes mischief are the ones who hold strong opinions about non-scientifically studied subjects. Politics fits into this category, or has historically. When there is seemingly no way to validate any claims, all claims gain validity, even when they are contradictory to one another.

Then it is up to the personality traits to sort things out. Those with some general constellation of traits that fit the conservative mold will gravitate to authorities that espouse the strongest opinions. They tend not to need any validation as long as the person doing the spouting 'seems' trustworthy. Progressives, on the other hand, have difficulty with authority. Unfortunately they also too often have no real backup plan.

Both of these groups have a strong tendency to solve problems with the only instrument they have in their possession (another Maslowism - The Law of the Instrument). Their respective ideologies provide a convenient set of guides to solve any problem facing society. Conservatives have boiled theirs down to just a few old reliables, shrink government, lower taxes, and more recently, drill baby drill. Progressives, on the other hand resort to a few more in number, but still quite simplistic in approach. They tend to push socialistic (not necessarily socialISM) solutions that often do require the expansion of government's role in everyone's life. And of course that expansion has to be paid for! No wonder these two ideological groups can't get along.

But now we come to the crux of our dilemma. Using ideological beliefs as a basis for solving tremendously complex social problems isn't going to cut it. The reason is very simple in fact. Some kinds of problems might best be solved by improving or using existing institutions, the conservative approach, while others would better be solved by scrapping the existing institutions for new mechanisms attuned to the new realities of the modern world.

As an example of the former, consider higher education. Once, long ago, higher education was a unique and very effective means for taking the brightest and best and providing them with a broad and deep education suited to build critical thinking skills. The academy was run by the professors who had the ability to guide young minds toward that end. Not that everything was perfect. Far from it. There were obvious problems with the way the academy failed to adapt to more modern needs of society. This however led to a progressive movement to 'reform' higher education. I can't go into all or even many of the details here, but I will point out one consequence of this movement to reform that has been devastating to the whole enterprise of education. That is the movement to apply quantitative measures to performance criteria just as has happened in the business world since after World War II. We are just beginning to recognize the damage done to business enterprises as a result of the naive application of the feedback principle (cybernetics) to business processes. I say naive, because what was applied was extremely simplistic and failed utterly to recognize the real role of hierarchical control structures as have evolved in natural systems. In a sense, business is considerably more mechanistic than education; the latter is far more 'organic' in nature. So businesses could limp along doing the wrong things and still be somewhat profitable (especially in an era of expanding energy resources!). But education has been essentially ruined. What was once a process based on intuition and experience has now become a process of turning a crank to get students through the degree mill. I argue that a conservative approach should have been taken. Analysis of the real problems encountered in education would have revealed that the tendency to expand the role of higher ed to broaden the definition of a baccalaureate degree and include more students under that banner has forced educational institutions to lower their standards and accept too many subjects as 'intellectual' and worthy of the title. Instead of responding to the need for more people, particularly business and blue-collar workers, to get more than a high school education in technical areas by expanding technical schools with certification, we instead created higher ed schools of ...... Fill in the dots. One of my favorites is the school of hotel and restaurant management! I kid you not. There is, undoubtedly a very intricate 'theory' of hotel and restaurant management that requires a baccalaureate degree program.

I don't mean to belittle these trades. Everyone can contribute to the good of society in what they do for a living. And a fair amount of work skills and knowledge need to be learned beyond high school. But by encompassing these trades under the umbrella of higher education we have seriously complexified the nature of higher ed and responded by instituting for-profit business practices. Instead we should have examined more closely what higher ed meant and what schools were doing right to keep the flame of critical thinking held high. We didn't. We took the expedient way out while proclaiming the virtues of progressive thinking. Bad idea.

As an example of a problem that needs a progressive solution I will simply mention the American health care system, or rather the lack of a system. I know I am asking for flaming by doing this but in my opinion the current pseudo system is badly broken and for a fundamental reason. For-profit medicine is a truly stupid idea. Putting the profit motive behind something as fundamental to civilization as health care is mind boggling stupid (as Douglas Adams might have said). This is a case where a progressive solution is desperately needed. I will be happy to explain sometime in the future. I haven't put any emphasis on it because, frankly, I think we have much bigger fish to fry in the energy arena. But I can offer reasons for these assertions if anyone is interested.

My point here is that it makes no sense to think of the world as having one ideological solution set that applies to all social problems. Nor does a centrist approach make sense when it mostly implies just compromising from either extreme to arrive at a non-solution that satisfies no one. The way to truly attack and solve problems requires that you actually do understand the problem and are ready, willing, and able to apply which ever kind of thinking is needed.

It Takes Sapience

Unfortunately...

Once again we arrive at an unhappy conclusion about our species. It appears that the majority of people on this planet are overwhelmed by the scope of our social and biophysical issues. In that state it is truly hard to not fall back on ideology, or what is about the same thing, religious beliefs, to find answers. The world is simply too complex and moving too fast for ordinary humans to deal with these issues in a holistic, systemic way. Not even our so-called leaders know how to approach the problems. And as I've said before, especially in a democratically run political process, with the vast majority not able to think things through in an appropriate rule set, those leaders couldn't effect the kinds of changes needed, or reclaim the non-failed institutions as would be appropriate. They can't do it without losing their leadership roles.

So, what can be done about it? That is the sad part. Nothing can be done. This game has to play itself out on the field as we find it. We will continue to see deeper and deeper rifts between ideological factions as the stresses of economic contraction increase. It is all we know how to do.

Given the scale of what we are witnessing I would suggest that the more sapient among us have no hope to correct things. They would do well to keep their heads down and keep themselves alive through the bottleneck. Of course, if they really possess higher sapience, they may already have figured this out.

Comments

[David]

Excellent post. I used to think of myself, perhaps, as a 'pragmatist', but I have long since realised that when Tony Blair talked of the economy and only doing "what works" he was deluding himself. It is impossible to deduce after the fact 'what works' from measurements, statistics and anecdotes in a complex, chaotic system of interactions, positive and negative feedback loops and time lags. Here, some sort of 'feed-forward' ideology is needed and also an over-arching 'lossy' ideology to help dampen down 'resonances' and oscillations while still allowing the markets to do what they do best. Or that's the woolly way I imagine it!

[GaryA]

One of the unwritten rules I apply when reading peoples opinions of 'facts' is to work out their ideology behind the rhetoric. I've found very, very few people are free from some sort of subterranean ideology and therefore prejudice.I'm including myself in that statement-in the past!
Actually as I get older (in my fourties now) I trust more to intuition and instinct than purely the narrow torchbeam of conscious attention and rationality. There is a kind of 'wisdom of the instincts' which tell me when some idea or conventional POV is wrong (even though I cant articulate the unease at the time).
Subsequent investigation and thought have found my instincts were right in subtle ways I cant explain.
Apologies for the self indulgent direction of this post but its something I'm curious about and wonder if others have experienced this phenomona....?

[David]

"And as I've said before, especially in a democratically run political process, with the vast majority not able to think things through in an appropriate rule set, those leaders couldn't effect the kinds of changes needed, or reclaim the non-failed institutions as would be appropriate. They can't do it without losing their leadership roles. "

Is this a call for an alternative to democracy? And, dare I say it, some form of 'One World Government'?

[Mark Twain]

George, I posted a comment recently at TOD that touches on a thread within your tapestry above. I hope you don't mind if I re-post it here:

My slow journey of understanding the various problems facing the human race (and the rest of life on this planet) has lead me to seek the foundational assumptions that are - ultimately - the root cause(s) of our problems.

There are many problems - resource depletion, environmental degradation, population overshoot, EROI, politics and tribalism, energy production/export issues, behavioral psychology, and all the discussions to quantify them and rank their importance. TOD has been a great place to see and participate in these discussions.

Over the holiday break, I spent some time searching beyond these issues to the more basic assumptions that lead to these problems. I am faced with an inescapable conclusion:

It is our belief, as a species, that the planet and all life that lives upon it is ours to do with as we please. It is our belief that the Earth is under our dominion. We divide up what there is of the various pieces, and constantly fight others for some of theirs. If we could reach the planets or the stars, we would fight over them.

The Judeo-Christian belief-systems (and many other belief systems) clearly grant this right to humans, and all other problems grow from this poisoned illusion.

I do not expect that we are capable of altering such a basic belief in our own greatness. If we do not "own" everything, then we must admit to an equality with the rest of Nature - and this is not in within our capabilities as a species, and never has been.

[George Mobus]

David,

I suspect you of being a control systems engineer! Your language suggests as much.

You might be interested in the series I did on the nature of 'sapient governance', the application of hierarchical control theory to governance issues.

My approach is not to, a priori, design a 'government' but to examine how such systems emerge in the evolution of bio- and eco-systems, e.g. homeostasis, autopoiesis, and trophic flow regulation. The point is to see where such regulation and coordination processes might apply to the governance of societies. Of course a necessary condition is that the society be comprised of sapient beings, otherwise one is faced with reversion to autocratic rule vs. cooperation for the greater good.

I liked your phrase, "...while still allowing the markets to do what they do best." I see markets (doing what they do best) as the main mechanism for coordination between low level work processes where one process is a customer of the product produced by an upstream process (similar to Toyota's TPS (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toyota_Production_System ).

You can see the links to the series in this index page: http://faculty.washington.edu/gmobus/Background/seriesIndex.html

WRT: "...a call for an alternative to democracy..." As per my comment above about a sapient governance depending on a sapient populace, I am not calling for an alternative, per se. I am pointing out that given the lack of sapience in the general population, that democracy has produced some unintended negative consequences. One wonders if Hamilton might not have had a better insight into human nature than did Jefferson?! But no. Even the elite are not wiser necessarily, so a plutocracy wouldn't have necessarily produced any better results. And it certainly wouldn't have provided a basis for an egalitarian society.

As for a World Government. I think it is clear that by maintaining nationalism and division, we have done significant damage to our planet in the name of sovereignty. Not to mention the horrors and human sufferings of wars to maintain such sovereignty. If mankind were ever to evolve into a more sapient species, I think the issue of unified global governance would not be a problem at all. The only reason 'world government' strikes fear into the hearts of many is that they intuitively recognize the impossibility of our current species to institute a wise form.

Of course another precondition for anything like a global governance system to work (aside from the level of sapience of the governed) is that the scale has to be manageable. Even if every man, woman, and child on Earth were eusapient, at 6.7 to 9 billion individuals, having overshot our carrying capacity several times over, I suspect it would be an impossibly complex proposition.

George

[George Mobus]

GaryA,

"I've found very, very few people are free from some sort of subterranean ideology and therefore prejudice.I'm including myself in that statement-in the past!"

Absolutely true (I think!) Hence my own approach to question everything, including my own subterranean beliefs.

I've actually gone from believing the world was in deep trouble, back in the '70s based on the evidence and hypothesizing of the time, to believing things could work out in the '80s based on what seemed like reasonable evidence at that time (I even voted for Ronnie, if you can believe it), to now believing essentially what I believed in the '70s! Only this time with a lot more empirical evidence to work with. Some people think I am wishy-washy or a bandwagon rider because I seem to so easily change my mind!

It seems to me the real trick is to recognize our natural tendency to have these kinds of beliefs and not be afraid to tease them out and question them. My suspicion is that the vast majority of people don't even recognize they have such deeply ingrained biases, let alone expose them to the light of reason.

As to your increasing trust in intuition, etc. I think you are experiencing exactly the kind of thing I talk about in sapience -- that your accumulation of tacit knowledge has proven veridical in past experiences and can be trusted. The application of such tacit knowledge to decision making is, by definition but also by empirical psychological testing, subconscious. That is why it seems to come from nowhere and why we call it intuition.

I would be cautious with using the term instincts, however. Instincts are the behavioral drives that are genetically programmed into us. Almost by definition they are most often right because they have proven to be advantageous evolutionarily. Where we run into trouble is that sometimes our instincts (designed for survival in the late Pleistocene) have some problems in dealing with modern situations. E.g. you can't rely on the fight-or-flight response when your boss threatens you! Your intuitions, on the other hand, are based on learned responses that can, when appropriate, override your instincts. Just a tiny semantics correction, if I may.

Good observation.

George

[George Mobus]

Mark,

No problem. This blog is about disseminating ideas as well as questioning them. My hope is others reading here will be spurred to critical thought and provide amplification or present thoughtful questions.

George