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Good governance is really a technical problem, but the technology based on science. Cognitive science.
Mock as you will. Thinking will work, even if it's solely in picking good governors. There is nothing poisoning humanity worse than each person's desire to have the easy life. Align culture with our nature. Ot else!
There is nothing poisoning humanity worse than each person's desire to have the easy life.
life being hard all the time is not the answer either.
can a life of ease be coterminous with our state of resources, that's the question i ask, and i think the answer lies in balance.
the 'work ethic' mentality has driven several societies bananas, go figure.
to live on the backs of others, parasitically, is what i understood your meaning to be. in that sense, yes. 'The history of public debt is full of irony. It rarely follows our ideas of order and justice.' Thomas Piketty
But like hate, and racism, greed must be taught, usually by example. Sharing is always there, but it's gentle and easily suppressed.
When I watched the second plane crash, live, into the Twin Towers, I turned to my wife and said "I guess now we'll have to share!" That is exactly what I said. Ask my wife.
I guess I was wrong. Align culture with our nature. Ot else!
You're implicitly saying what I mean - that societies, like humans, are innately stable, until the ideologies infect them.
The society is inseparable from its dominant ideology or ideology mix
that's a bit absolute, i think. the politics of the leaders, yes pretty much, but the people not necessarily...
nazism was an exception, it's rare to have such a high percentage in lockstep. it never lasts either.
even as one ideology conditions society, (like now with neoconnery), there are growing numbers of people who question, subvert, and sketch out alternatives to such.
maybe your use of the word 'mix' in the last sentence tempers your meaning.
what i find interesting is the bedfellowing between apparently conflictual ideologies, (vatican/fascism, con/libdems, greens/polluters), as these call the supposed intellectual integrity into question, and often reveal them as just another wrapping for expedience.
potemkin powers, sharing agendas. 'The history of public debt is full of irony. It rarely follows our ideas of order and justice.' Thomas Piketty
My point is "if only society were free of ideology..." is naïve. Substitute "narratives", "myths", for "ideology". Might as well be asking for a society composed of lobotomised individuals. So, in what may be my last act of "advising", I'll advise you to cut the jargon. -- My old PhD advisor, to me, 26/2/11
of course our masters are infected by an idea, that of unbridled greed, so much so that they are taking away the option of many who were comfortable with being 'consumers', the new global 'citizens', and leaving them in the dust.
is it splitting hairs to think what we need to immunise ourselves, both from rogue ideologies and from the idiot vacuity of 'i shop, therefore i exist', may be ideal_ism_?
at which point does the distinction become a difference? if i keep silence about my ideals, can that protect me from being an ideologue?
is ideology when people take an idea, judge it as ideal, and then make it into a movement? or is it when the supposed ideal is revealed to be bogus, but some insist on continuing to believe, revealing themselves to be ideo_logues_?
-lists on the waxing phase, -ologues on the waning?
i still think your 'mix' is the best summation. provided a society is tranquil, one could say the philosophies are congruent, in that they may be in spats, such as the ordination of women in the church, or whether to ban foxhunting etc, but there is enough harmony that it's tempting to say all their differences are small enough that one can talk about an 'umbrella' ideology, but it doesn't really describe the reality on the ground. sure, europe's countries are all 'capitalist', but there are so many degrees of commitment to capitalism here as to make the term near-meaningless, imo.
is capitalism an ideology? it doesn't have much idealism left to it, unless you count the delusions of the ayn rand crowd.
perhaps ideologies are simply ideas we don't resonate with... 'The history of public debt is full of irony. It rarely follows our ideas of order and justice.' Thomas Piketty
Any way you shuffle a deck of cards, a shuffle that sorts the cards neatly into the four suits, or produces a 'random' sequence are both equally likely because the cards know nothing. But we recognize 'consistent' sequences and ignore apparent randomness.
From my POV, inconsistency often leads to innovative creativity. You can't be me, I'm taken
It's the people who think reality is a one-night stand who spoil it for the rest of us.
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