Fun with the language..................

Ostensibly, these “nuisance-protests” are carried out by distinct groups motivated by a particular cause, such as the environment, Palestine, trans-rights, or immigration. In reality, however, all are animated by the same, self-destructive ideology: neotoddlerism.

-as culled from here

in the grip............................

 

If your opinions on one subject can be predicted from your opinions on another, you may be in the grip of an ideology.  When you truly think for yourself, your conclusions will not be predictable.

-Kevin Kelly

a hierarchy..................................

  I read about the duties of the Policy Review Board I am asked to join.  It "serves a critical function in this work.  The Board, consisting of leading citizens with many different backgrounds, philosophies, and experiences, functions to guarantee the objectivity of the Public Agenda's work.  Board members review Public Agenda projects, publications, and other material to insure that they are free of ideological bias, that they are balanced and thoughtful, and that they represent the highest level of analysis and research."  Prose like that gags, doesn't it?  I mean, if leading citizens with different backgrounds, philosophies, and experiences guarantee objectivity, they why isn't the United Nations objective?  And are we sure we want to be free of ideological bias?  Isn't a hierarchy of values valuable?

-William F. Buckley, Jr., Overdrive: A Personal Documentary

a cockpit.......................

 We live in a time of ideological exhaustion. . . . Identity is the ruling orthodoxy of the day. Wesley Yang calls it the “successor ideology”, but it is less an ideology than a cockpit of grinding, wounding grievances contradicting one another: a perpetual conflict machine.

-Martin Gurri, from here

thanks Michael

Assuming that is not a good thing.................

 Another thing I think should be avoided is extremely intense ideology because is cabbages up one's mind.

-Charlie Munger

Wow, here's a great idea................

I think conservative intellectuals should not try to build an ideological scaffolding around the Trump presidency. Just focus on trying to bring rigor back into academia.

-Arnold Kling

Be careful what you wish for..............

A group of political activists were attempting to show the Master how their ideology would change the world.

The Master listened carefully.

The following day he said, "An ideology is as good or bad as the people who make use of it.  If a  million wolves were to organize for justice, would they cease to be a million wolves?"

-Anthony de Mello,  One Minute Wisdom

Give him an "A"................

........................................for strategic use of weasel words:

"Every religion, ideology, and creed has its shadows, and no matter which creed you follow you should acknowledge your shadow and avoid the naive reassurance that "it cannot happen to us."  Secular science has at least one big advantage over most traditional religions - namely, that it is not inherently terrified of its shadow, and it is in principle willing to admit its mistakes and blind spots."

-Yuval Noah Harari,  21 Lessons for the 21st Century

As we used to say.................

.............................back at the fraternity house, "all things in moderation - including moderation."

I have abandoned that libertarian project, however, because I have come to abandon ideology. This essay is an invitation for you to do likewise — to walk out of the “clean and well-lit prison of one idea.” Ideology encourages dodgy reasoning due to what psychologists call “motivated cognition,” which is the act of deciding what you want to believe and using your reasoning power, with all its might, to get you there. Worse, it encourages fanaticism, disregard for social outcomes, and invites irresolvable philosophical disputes. It also threatens social pluralism — which is to say, it threatens freedom.

The better alternative is not moral relativism. The better alternative is moderation, a commodity that is rapidly disappearing in political life, with dangerous consequences for the American republic.

-Jerry Taylor, from his essay The Alternative to Ideology

via

Beware............................

     Therefore, in a system of multiple models across multiple disciplines, I should add as an extra rule that you should be very wary of heavy ideology.

     You can have heavy ideology in favor of accuracy, diligence, and objectivity.   But a heavy ideology that makes you absolutely sure that the minimum wage should be raised or that it shouldn't - and it's kind of a holy construct where you know you're right - makes you a bit nuts.

     This is a very complicated system.  And life is one damn relatedness after another.  It's all right to think that, on balance, you suspect that civilization is better if it lowers the minimum wage or raises it.  Either position is OK.  But being totally sure on issues like that with a strong, violent ideology, in my opinion, turns you into a lousy thinker.  So beware of ideology-based mental misfunctions.

-Charles T. Munger,  Poor Charlie's Almanack:  The Wit and Wisdom of Charles T. Munger

Ideology gone wild..................

     Mao's last great program was the Cultural Revolution of the late 1960s, where ideological purity rather than competence became the rationale for promotion at state-owned (which is to say substantially all) Chinese industry.  Colleges and universities were closed, while teenagers were released from school and dispatched to attack the Four Olds:  Old Customs, Old Culture, Old Habits, and Old Ideas.  (While touring a cave in Hangzhou filled with Buddhist carvings, I noticed that the figures near the ground level had all had their faces smashed off, while the figures higher up the walls were intact.  When I asked our guide about this, she said simply, "The high school students did not bring a ladder that day.")

-Clay Shirky,  Little Rice:  Smartphones, Xiaomi, and the Chinese Dream

The elitists and their smugness...............

.....................as detailed in this longish VOX essay.  Excerpt here:

The smug style resists empathy for the unknowing. It denies the possibility of a politics whereby those who do not share knowing culture, who do not like the right things or know the Good Facts or recognize the intellectual bankruptcy of their own ideas can be worked with, in spite of these differences, toward a common goal.

It is this attitude that has driven the dispossessed into the arms of a candidate who shares their fury. It is this attitude that may deliver him the White House, a "serious" threat, a threat to be mocked and called out and hated, but not to be taken seriously.

The wages of smug is Trump

via

The Munger Operating System: Part 2

Avoid intense ideologies. Always consider the other side as carefully as your own.

Another thing I think should be avoided is extremely intense ideology, because it cabbages up one’s mind. You’ve seen that. You see a lot of it on TV, you know preachers for instance, they’ve all got different ideas about theology and a lot of them have minds that are made of cabbage.

But that can happen with political ideology. And if you’re young it’s easy to drift into loyalties and when you announce that you’re a loyal member and you start shouting the orthodox ideology out what you’re doing is pounding it in, pounding it in, and you’re gradually ruining your mind. So you want to be very careful with this ideology. It’s a big danger.

In my mind I have a little example I use whenever I think about ideology, and it’s these Scandinavian canoeists who succeeded in taming all the rapids of Scandinavia and they thought they would tackle the whirlpools in the Grand Rapids here in the United States. The death rate was 100%. A big whirlpool is not something you want to go into and I think the same is true about a really deep ideology.                                                                                    

I have what I call an iron prescription that helps me keep sane when I naturally drift toward preferring one ideology over another. And that is I say “I’m not entitled to have an opinion on this subject unless I can state the arguments against my position better than the people do who are supporting it. I think that only when I reach that stage am I qualified to speak.” Now you can say that’s too much of an iron discipline..it’s not too much of an iron discipline. It’s not even that hard to do.

via 

Fundamentally..................

"In ideologies there is not Jesus: in his tenderness, his love, his meekness. And ideologies are rigid, always. Of every sign: rigid. And when a Christian becomes a disciple of the ideology, he has lost his faith: he is no longer a disciple of Jesus, he is a disciple of this attitude of thought."
-Pope Francis, as excerpted from this read-worthy homily

thanks gene