Sure they do. Listen to someone like Jordan Peterson. He's a fairly sophisticated thinker and has ideas not just about ideologies, but how people come to hold them.
Doesn't change the fact that he lumps people *more* reasonable than him in with extremist & radicals all the time.
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funny you bring him up. i was thinking precisely about him as a possible exception to my general rule. he talks a lot about ideological possession but does seem to have some dogmatic tendencies, though i think his worldview is too unique to categorize as a preconceived ideology
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A conservative with dogmatic tendencies? Now I've seen it all. :P
Agreed, but he categorizes others based on his own dogmatism, which is what I meant.
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haha, no, a meta-ideological person who is also in some ways dogmatic/ideologically blinded...
you're right, he does do that. his sweeping lambasting of "the bloody postmodernists" borders on conspiratorial at times
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How anyone would take a modern French philosopher of that vein seriously on anything and not think that they've led themselves astray is beyond me.
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yeah i think he's kind of misguided in this area, though i think his critique of relativism as a corroding influence on civilization is on point. for the record i love JBP --- think he's brilliant and doing valuable work, though has his flaws like anyone
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He's an extremely brilliant psychologist. He's a little bit smarter than me, but not so much so that I can't understand how brilliant he is.
Most of his political ideas are poorly cultivated. He reads a few books and thinks he's found the answers, as far as I can tell. Naive.
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people running around condemning ideology rarely understand what it is. It's not a curse word. Human rights is an ideology; democracy is an ideology. Should treat people well = ideology. People don't truly see their own most held beliefs as ideological.
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when most people use ideology as a curse word what they mean is that the person is dogmatic.
Everyone is ideological except for people who are very severely disordered. It is unavoidable.
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i think T McKenna's usage of the term permanently tainted my understanding of what it actually means : P ... at the same time, idk if i agree that "treat people well" is an ideology; seems like a single maxim; i think of an ideology as an elaborate web of ideas/justifications
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Yeah, I think Ian was stretching that explanation a bit past the point of credulity, but he's right in the broader sense - which is really what matters.
absolute, dogmatic, and unquestionable support of any specific formulation of the ideologies of democracy and human rights will still confine thinking and could (i suspect) result in some bad scenarios tho
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first thing that comes to mind is you could end up closed off to even better formulations of those ideologies, or better alternatives -- retaining some openness to other possibilities still seems better than fundamentalism
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"treat people well" was not accepted for most of human existence. "Treat my clan well" or "tribe" or "family". But as a general rule, no. It got that weight only thru various ideological movements at various times and places.
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Think you're shifting the goalposts a bit here.
Which doesn't mean you're wrong about anything you're saying. We were just on a different track.
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people who think that ideas about moral or organizational behaviour are obvious get their asses handed to them by ideological movements. That includes movements like rationalism and humanism.
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it takes a lot of work to get people to treat people who aren't part of their group well. A ton of work. That work is ideological and identity based, it ties the two together.
It also takes a ton of work to get people to treat people systematically badly, strangely enough.


