Easy Now

Ideology is shape. It is direction. But within it must be intelligent controls allowing for its disintegration if the ideology itself endangers the reality it crowns, just as medical research has allowed for disintegrating stitches and collapsing casts that take into account the dynamic nature of living tissue.

All historical social entities are birthed on new ideas, and then mature and age, running on those previous ideas until they diverge internally and die out due to energy loss. They become unable to adjust to the constantly changing environment.

The same thing is going to happen with the next iteration, whatever form it will take. And so we have a dual purpose, to design a system that is resilient in preserving its humanity, and a system that decays and dies in a humane way as well, making way for the birth of the next system.

In times of crisis, we must acknowledge that it is easy for our ideas to become radicalized and seek authoritarian power exercise, merely because the ideas themselves are tempered under authoritarian forces. It is too easy for a reactive force to push back in the opposite direction with the opposite force, until it aligns itself as the master in the power relationship, which leads to an endless cycle of oscillating exploitive power groups. These oscillating power shifts do seem to diminish until a new equilibrium is established. But at what cost? Don’t we have the choice to build machinery that doesn’t behave this way? If it is impossible to avoid fine, but let’s at least try something else to see if that is the case, rather than foolishly and fearfully stick to this ongoing hideous charade. 

Education

Education creates a knowledge base that can be anchored to reality. But each of us can only hold so much knowledge, so that the rest of our convictions move in the direction of whom we trust, and whom else we perceive to have a knowledge base that is anchored to reality. Without education, we are a malleable mass, ready to follow whoever has not only the strongest convictions, but the most powerful means to manipulate and create a false reality. Education creates a stable base in a given discipline. The educated can then trust those educated whose surface beliefs reach down to their most unshakable convictions, informed by values that they can all agree on.

The more people become lazy and resign themselves with relying on another knowledge source, the more that entire body of knowledge becomes weakened and unmoored from reality itself, which dangerously exposes it to hijacking from those who seek to manipulate the perception of reality. 

Nodes and Networks

Each individual is connected to many other individuals, so it is important for each individual to be sound in mind and spirit, as a matter of structural integrity. If one goes down, that degrades the rest, making it more probable that another goes down, and the problem grows exponentially. Mutual expectations sustain each other. A strong individual, when properly integrated into a community, makes for a strong community in turn. But it becomes important to clearly define what strong means. We want good self-esteem, but not egotism. We want self-confidence, but we don’t want unnecessary aggression. And etc.

Humans are to be ends and never means. I say this not as a philosophical speculation, but a declaration that this is how things actually work. If you treat a human being as a mean, they will be corrupted to the point of barely functioning as the original desired mean in the first place. Respecting an end will generate a means. 

Against Cruelty

You cannot leave the weak behind, nor can you justify with some obscure notion of predestination or social Darwinism or fatalism the decision to leave the weak to perish. Because the weak are part of you. Your destiny is coupled with the weak. If you destroy the weak, you weaken yourself, leaving you to be eventually destroyed by the dogmas that you so righteously perpetuate. 

Debate

We should take care to avoid overreliance on judgments based on conceptions of what should be. The ideal conception is a beauty to behold, but quickly becomes ugly when you attempt to place it onto reality, as it bends and contorts a reality that is far more complex than the simpler static ideal picture.

We have to be patient with people. In trying times, this seems to be an annoying suggestion, but I think a good one. No one has a perfect store of information. No one is a permanent fixture. People do in fact gain information, and they do in fact change as the world changes. If we issue judgment, it constrains our view of the judged and causes them to react to the constraint itself. Judgments and attacks insulate the recipient and shut them off to the world, alienate them, and further couple them with their initial causes, however misled those causes are. 

Sometimes this is for the better, sometimes not. It has become increasingly important to attack the foundations of an ideology that has grown malevolent and is guiding us towards ruin. However on an individual level, ideology becomes wrapped up with one's own ego, and thus one's projection into the social world. Ideology is not changed through force, but through learning and compassion. Maybe the best avenue is to patiently argue what you believe in, for as long as you believe in it, and keep up the pressure.