Ideology and pragmatism.

Ideas are fundamental to the production of a functioning society. Even a society, or the concept of functioning are ideas. Who would want to live in a society without justice or freedom? Without ideas of how we should live there is is simply anarchy, a dog eat dog world. I have an ideology for how the world should be which is based upon equal rights for everyone regardless of here they live in the world. My ideology consists of people being free to do basically what they want in a system that has a safety net so that everyone gets food, shelter, education and healthcare regardless of who they are and where they came from.

One of the important ideas for me came in a discussion while walking on a mountain with a friend of mine. It as one of two fantastic concepts we developed that day, both of us are agreed upon that, but unfortunately this is the only one we can remember. It is the importance of being able to have two different opinions about the same thing. This seems like an oxymoron, but let me try to explain.

I think that it is absolutely a moral imperative that all people in the USA should have healthcare. In the richest country in the world no-one should die because they can't go to a doctor to get something checked out. I also am a firm believer in a democracy, that while it is messy and inefficient a democracy stands for one of my ideals that people should decide for themselves how they wish things to be. In the USA right now the majority of people do not want what I want in terms of healthcare. I have two beliefs about the same subject that are incompatible, but I still think it is important for me to have these two beliefs.

The essence of this issue is the problem of ideology and the real world. Throughout history (but most especially in the 20th century) there have been attempts to institute ideology as political fact. These have had, at best, mixed results. While the spread of human rights and democracy has been ideologically based, the results of communism, fascism, pacifism, and the primacy of various religious ideologies in the real world have usually been appalling. The idea that everyone should share everything equally, that there should be no violence, and that everyone should believe in the same values as determined by the One True God is a lovely idea that fails spectacularly when it comes across acquisitive people ho are willing to fight for their beliefs which are different than yours. Since the world is largely made up of such people ideologies generally fail.

As I have said, the 20th century as a time of ideology, a time largely of experimentation and conflict between various ideologies. Looking at the world around us I would say that through the process of social evolution there is pretty close to a worldwide consensus of what works, and that is a representational, democratic government with a limited regulation of a free market economic system. There are pockets of resistance to this concept, and then there are ideologues within the concept.

The resistance to the concept comes from antiquated belief systems, essentially that there is a single right way to live and that everyone should conform to that method of living. I would say that the two places that are the core of this resistance are the fundamentalists within the muslim and christian faiths. With the jihadists of Asia there is the belief that the hole world should live under their version of Sharia Law, and that those who disagree should be eliminated. In the fundamentalist Christian south of the USA are those who believe that God has outlined how everyone should live and that these should be the laws of the land regardless of the opinion of most of the people in that land. The fact that these two groups have been responsible for the majority of the war in the world for the last decade should not be a surprise.

But the resistance in this manner is shrinking inexorably. Ideologies flourish briefly but history shows us that they all succumb in the end to the facts of the world. Fundamentalist belief is shrinking at an extremely rapid rate throughout the world because when faced with reality it is obvious that this belief is flawed. Societies with the lowest proportion of fundamentalists are the most peaceful, wealthiest, most flourishing societies of all time. Fundamentalism survives because those within those cultures produce children at a much higher rate than other cultures, and still as a proportion of people their numbers are shrinking. This is because a lot more fundamentalists leave the culture than people are converted to fundamentalism.

The USA still is a very idealistic country. There are a large group of fundamentalist Christians here, perhaps a fifth of the country. There is also a very large group of people who still hold to an ideology of the 20th century, the dogma that was laid down during the cold war. This group holds to the position that anything related to socialism is evil, that the free market is best. This is probably half the country despite being rather a silly position in a country with social security, a post office, government health care for veterans and seniors, care for poor children, government run education and so on. Finally there is about a fifth of the country that are progressives, left wing people who want rights for gay people, no wars ever, more even distribution of wealth and a vast safety net for the disadvantaged.

I'm a believer in the principles and ideology of the progressive movement and I firmly believe that this movement is where the USA is going (and where much of Europe has gone). But I am also a pragmatist in that I know that most of the people in the USA to not yet agree to these principles. I am comforted by the knowledge that the direction of public opinion is moving towards my ideals, away from the bigoted, racist, sexist, aggressive, xenophobic past. I think that a black man named Barak Obama named an hispanic woman to the Supreme Court, and that there is a serious debate about same sex marriage is ample evidence of that.

To return to my original point of having two different opinions on the same subject I believe that Barak Obama has a number of concepts that make up an ideology. I think Barak Obama thinks that all people in the world should be free, able to vote, practice their religion, marry anyone they want, and that everyone should have education, shelter and health care regardless of who they are and where they live. I also think that Barak Obama is a pragmatist and knows that you can't magic these results out of thin air against the majority opinion in the USA. Progressives right now are furious with the wishy-washy, centrist, compromising nature of Obama's presidency. Many threaten to remove their support unless he delivers what they want. I say that ideology has always been the driving force for good, but good has only ever happened through pragmatic action. Progressives should hold on to their beliefs, their dreams, their ideology, but they should also understand that change is gradual, incremental and comes about through convincing others rather than imposing an ideology on the unwilling.