10 Habits of Mind to Avoid Ideological Thinking
We live in an age of ideology. It promises security, but it's a losing bet. It leads down a rabbit hole to confusion, disappointment, and unhappiness. Here are some practices to help avoid ideology.
In an earlier essay - Clear Thinking in an Age of Ideology, I wrote about the challenge of ideology and it’s sources.
Here are some habits of mind we can develop to avoid the trap of ideology.
Don’t look for a “Theory of Everything.”
The world is complex. No theory is going to exhaust all of reality. If Aristotle, Plato, and Aquinas couldn’t do it, neither can we.
As a professor of mine once said—reality comes from God‘s mind, and philosophical language comes from ours, so there is no way that one system will explain or exhaust all reality. This doesn’t mean there is no truth or good theories that help explain the world. There are great thinkers, ideas, and principles that can be a guide to life and to understanding the world. But there is no theory of everything. Search for wisdom and leave the theory of understanding reality to God.
In summary: Philosophy > Ideology Wisdom > Theory.
Cultivate intellectual humility.
Be humble in the face of complexity. Be willing to listen and learn. Even when we think we understand something, there is more to learn and refine. Cultivate wonder, reverence for being, and the virtue of teachability. This disposition also increases happiness.
We can know the truth, but that doesn’t mean we always do.
Truth, says St. Thomas Aquinas, is conforming the mind to reality. It is not the conforming of reality to our minds. Experiencing correction is difficult and humbling. We should not grudgingly accept correction but actually cultivate an attitude of rejoicing when we learn we have made an error. Correction can feel bad in the moment, but it means we are growing. A strong commitment to the truth should keep us humble.
Relativism is a gateway to ideology.
This step might sound counterintuitive. We might associate relativism with open-mindedness and even with the opposite of absolutism. However, as I explained, relativism closes the door to philosophy. “Our minds and our ideas become the arbiter of truth and reality. If there is no truth, ideology is all that is left…”
5.“Everything You Thought is Wrong!” Be wary of contrarian counter-narratives.
There are no doubt serious problems with many standard, establishment narratives, and it is important to rethink our assumptions, especially the most foundational ones. That was a key theme of Benedict XVI’s Regensburg Address where he challenges the dominant vision of scientism and empiricist rationality as false. (This is the position that rationality is limited to what is empirically verifiable. It is incoherent and leads to scientism.)
And speaking of scientism - there’s justified suspicion of standard narratives that come from the state-corporate-media alliance. The deceit and suppression of credible scientists like Jay Bhattacharya during Covid is a prime example. So it’s good to be skeptical of dominant narratives.
And yet - it’s important to be careful. Because we are inundated with propaganda and false narratives, new, contrarian, revelatory takes can be very compelling.
Sometimes the contrarian narratives are right - A lot of the standard nutrition is wrong. The Standard American Diet promoted by the government really does make you fat.
But sometimes they are wrong-Churchill was NOT the real villain of World War II no matter what Daryl Cooper and Tucker Carlson may want you to believe. Hitler was a killer who destroyed the lives of millions of people and families.
Both blind adherence to the standard narratives AND getting sucked into counter-narratives can be an error. We can easily get boondoggled. Don’t just assume a story is right because it’s making all the right people mad. Don’t buy into the idea that the enemy of my enemy is necessarily my friend or right about this theory.
Don’t be a Reactionary – Don’t reject something simply because your opponent supports it.
Related to the above - sometimes we can end up taking a position just because our opponent holds the opposite. Now, this is not necessarily a bad heuristic. I am often skeptical of many ideas and theories simply because people who tend to be wrong on almost everything else hold to it. And my suspicions often prove correct!
This approach can be helpful, but it can also make us reactionary. An example I have been using for years now is how we think about organic food and metabolic health. Twenty years ago it was a left-wing position for hippies, so conservatives didn’t like it. Now with a growing concern among conservatives about processed food metabolic disorder the left is labeling it a right-wing issue. But organic food and health don’t have to be right or left. In fact, the debate is much more about technocracy and crony capitalism.
Make Distinctions
We must be careful not to overlap or conflate two or three different things. Making distinctions is a hallmark of clear thinking, but it isn’t easy, so we have to work at it. Many arguments proceed in a confusing, chaotic, and ultimately unproductive manner because people fail to clarify the terms of the debate.
For instance, I am generally opposed to foreign aid for poor countries, and I believe that one of the key things we can do in the United States to fight poverty is encourage marriage and discourage single motherhood. Before someone accuses me wanting poor people to starve or being heartless, judgmental, or disrespecting women, let’s make some distinctions.
Foreign aid can be necessary in response to natural disasters and war, but emergency relief should not be the model for addressing chronic poverty in foreign countries because it politicizes development, funds corruption and cronyism, and delays of business.
Fatherhood participation is a key factor in children’s success and mental health. We should stop policies penalizing marriage, and we should discourage single motherhood. At the same time I also believe we should encourage single mothers who need help and are working hard and making sacrifices for their children.
You may still disagree with these statements. But hopefully these further distinctions would allow us to have a civilized conversation rather than a shouting match. Making distinctions is difficult, but it is essential for clear thinking and intellectual honesty. We like to be passionate; we like to be “hardcore,” not “squishy.” But that can easily become an excuse to excite our passions and dull our intellects.
Making careful distinctions about what something actually means not only help us think more clearly it will improve our relationships and help us avoid unnecessary conflict.
Avoid the “technocratic mindset.”
This is the idea that there is a technical solution to every problem. This is a classic pathway to ideology. There is no solution to the problem of evil, sin, suffering, tragedy, poverty, or man himself. Evil does not come from the system, but as Alexander Solzhenitsyn explains, “the line between good and evil runs through the human heart.”
Just think about how complex it is to run a business - small or large - or even all the decisions, knowledge, and information required to manage a project or organize your household. We can’t even get a cup of coffee without relying on the skill, talents, knowledge, and intellectual insights of others. Seemingly simple things require a lot more work and skill than we may realize.
There is no way we can solve the problem of man, end poverty forever, make everyone healthy, or come up with the perfect political solution for society. If we start to think: if only we could do x, y, or z, then everything would be fine, it is a sign to pull back, and re-examine.
Don’t politicize religion
Christianity is not a political program. Benedict XVI warned us that when religion becomes politicized, the result is often unbelief. Politicizing religion also undermines evangelization.
Religion is the driving force of culture, and religion (or lack thereof) impacts politics whether we think it or not. But we need to be careful not to conflate them. Secularists have the temptation to divinize the state - Christians the temptation to politicize religion. Both are errors, and both end up creating ideologies.
Read Widely
It is important to read people with different visions - and not just about politics. Read history, literature, and poetry. As C.S. Lewis recommends, reading old books is especially important.
“Every age has its own outlook. It is specially good at seeing certain truths and specially liable to make certain mistakes. We all, therefore, need the books that will correct the characteristic mistakes of our own period. And that means the old books. All contemporary writers share to some extent the contemporary outlook – even those, like myself, who seem most opposed to it.”
I saw that Ted Gioia is running a program of reading through the humanities that would be a good way to engage old books, poetry, and music.
Ultimately, Ideology is a False Promise that Never Delivers.
We all struggle with ideological tendencies - and it is understandable. We need solid ground to make sense of the world, but there is a difference between philosophy and ideology. Ideology fails to explain the world; it only delivers disappointment and creates havoc on the way.
So once we start thinking we’ve finally figured everything out - that we finally understand the world in all its complexity - that’s a good sign we are probably on the wrong track.
Another thing I think should be in the list: "Be comfortable with the fact that you can't know some things." Many people do a lot of damage to themselves and others because they are uncomfortable with the unknowable, so they try to fill the gap with some kind of ideology, often dangerous.
"Seldom affirm, rarely deny, always distinguish" - Thomas Aquinas