If you haven’t noticed, people tend to argue.
A lot.
I mean, not everyone, but the loudest ones do. The smallest disagreement could ruffle more than a few feathers, especially if the one flustered felt as if their world view was being challenged. Generally, people do not like to be wrong and expect others to believe what they believe to be true.
Of course, most of us avoid fighting, so we avoid people who think differently — forming our own little echo chamber so we can always feel right.
This has kind of created this idea that “truth” is subjective.
Now, if truth really was subjective, then science, including social science, can not exist, because science needs something objective and logically consistent to study.
This subjective “truth”, therefore, is not really the truth, but only how people believe the world to be — their paradigm — and how they act upon it in their life — their ideology.
Now, there is no way I can sit here and arrogantly claim to know the “objective truth”, though I will share my idea on it with you in a later post.
In this article, however, we are going on a deep dive.
We are gonna learn how people form completely different paradigms and how these take the shape of the ideologies that we all know and love today.
Ok, but what is a Paradigm exactly?
Very good question.
As I mentioned earlier, as well as in the tooltip, a paradigm is basically the way someone sees the world. It’s how they answer questions like “why does anything exist?”, “why does it work like that?”, or my favorite, “what is my purpose?”.
Most people adopt the paradigm of their parents or communities at an early age without thinking too deeply into it. Basically, keeping them in a bubble. Any opposing idea is immediately attacked because the bubbled person feels as if their entire identity is about to go “pop”.
So, you need to know the paradigm of the guy you’re talking to so you can save yourself from getting punched in the gut.
Or them feeling as though you punched them in the gut and they go off and call their friends to beat you up.
Yeah, it can get that bad.
Even worse if their friends have missiles, guns, and economic leverage.
How is a paradigm formed?
Wow, you are full of good questions today, aren’t you?
Ok! So, basically, a paradigm is formed by combining and cross-referencing the 2 main forms of experience that you can go through — Physical experience and Metaphysical experience.
You can probably guess what Physical experience is.
Everything you touch, see, hear, smell, and taste and how that affects your body is your Physical experience.
This includes what you see other people do, what you read in books, and what you watch on your screens.
All of that.
Of course, this information is not a bunch of meaningless bits of data that would be stored in a soulless computer — it directly affects your mind.
It moves you.
Makes you feel something.
And you think about what you feel.
This is the Metaphysical experience.
Its your emotions that boil in our soul as a result of the physical world and the ideas you form about them based on your philosophy.
Philosophy?
Yes, Philosophy.
It’s not just some fancy subject old people study.
Basically, it’s our way of thinking and how we use it to answer the question “Why is the world the way it is?”
Everyone has a philosophy, either adapted from a famous person or made up on their own.
Now, there are many known philosophies, each with their own deeper explainations, but at their core, they have a distinct defining axiom about how we explain the world — either “explanations must be simple and observable”, leading to the belief that any explanation that can’t be tested is just plain silly, or “explanations must be rational without gaps”, leading to the belief in a Necessary Existence.
A Necessary Existence is basically a being that must always exist for reality to exist.
Theistic philosophies basically identify this as the completely perfect entity, with no deficiency, that reality itself relies on to exist.
Or, to put it simply for most cases, God.
Atheistic philosophies, on the other hand, believe that reality does not require such a being to exist and simply exists by itself.
I would love to go swimming in the details of this difference — going into String Theory, exploring how mathematical laws shape the universe, and how the absence of a Necessary Existence would imply an infinite universe without any law because a law is basically a guided limitation.
But I digress.
I’ll go into it in detail in another article.
Coming back to paradigm, Philosophy is extremely important to understand because it determines how someone views morality and influences how they determine the purpose of their life.
This is the importance of philosophy. It’s essentially the groundwork for the paradigm.
Cool, but how is this related to Ideology?
Another excellent question! You are very engaged with this, I see.
Ideology is the direct externalization of a paradigm.
If it wasn’t clear from the examples earlier, a paradigm is practically subconscious — so ingrained in the mind that it is often not even questioned. This unquestionable world view frames Ideology as the complete set of rules and behaviors that logically follow as a result.
There are literally dozens of ideologies, both atheistic and theistic, well known as religions — so many that it is super easy for someone to drown in infinite confusion as to which one is correct.
Many people don’t even know what ideology they follow. Most end up mixing two or three in a way that suits them while not fully subscribing to one, forming their own personal combo.
This causes individuals within ideological groups to end up disagreeing, fighting, and probably splitting into sects, actualizing their combos as new ideologies.
Usually such blended ideologies get ostracized from their mainstream communities — most religious communities are conservative and criticize liberalization while most atheist groups view their spiritualized counterparts to be overly emotional and illogical.
We will be looking into these and many more ideologies in the future, don’t worry.
As you can see, it can get very muddy.
To see things clearly, get people to see eye-to-eye, and clean up all this mess, we need to identify not only paradigms, but also dissect the core elements that make up the ideology based on the paradigm while ignoring all shallow labels and slogans.
This is not a very big task because every ideology has only three core elements: social, political, and economic — representing the three pillars of the socio-economic system
each with their own distinct dichotomies.
Alright. So then, what are these three core elements of Ideology?
Hold your horses! I was just about to get to that.
Every society needs an ideology as the status quo to answer the same three very important questions: How should people relate to each other? Who gets to make the rules? And how do we satisfy our desires?
The three core elements of ideology answer these questions — the social element, the political element, and the economic element. Each of these elements set up how their corresponding part of the socio-economic system should be structured — what rules should be laid out, why those rules need to be followed, and how they should be enforced.
What’s the Social Element?
It’s probably the most important element — society is made up of the very people who follow the ideology in the first place.
The Social Element of ideology determines how society organizes itself. It defines morality and deals with how the rights and responsibilities of relationships should be prioritized.
Basically, this determines whether the nature of relationships are Individualistic or Collectivistic.
Both sides of this coin have their perks and problems.
…leading to the arguments we all love to have.
At their core, Individualistic ideologies tend to value “rights” more while “responsibilities” are considered a personal choice and shouldn’t be forced on people if it limits their freedom to live the way they choose. So, on one hand, society is structured so everybody can have their rights fulfilled. Institutions are then built to take responsibility for individuals who need their rights to be satisfied.
But on the other hand, building and running these institutions are optional — people usually do so because they can get something out of it.
Collectivistic ideologies are the direct opposite — valuing “responsibilities” more while “rights” are generalized, focusing on making sure everyone gets what they need without causing disruptions by playing favorites. So, on one hand, society is structured so everybody can share responsibilities. Individuals then compromise on some of their rights to fulfill their responsibilities to society.
But on the other hand, such compromises can cause stagnation — innovative minds can be stuck doing the busy work, unable to follow their heart.
As you can see, the two sides are worlds apart. Both Individualists and Collectivists will swear by their axiom that they have the absolute correct way to structure society while owning their drawbacks and throwing, quite aggressively, handfuls of poop at each other.
And the Political Element?
Yes, politics is everywhere — the hundreds of people that make up a society need somebody to make sure that everyone follows the same rules that everybody agrees on.
Or, in other words, a government.
The Political Element of ideology determines that government, how power is distributed between it and society, and how the government is constructed accordingly.
Basically, this determines whether the government is Democratic or Autocratic.
And again, each side has its perks and problems.
Economic Element?
[The article draft continues…]
I’m getting it, but how do these elements work together?
Contrary to popular belief, these elements do not and cannot exist on their own. Though some ideologies are considered only focused on one of these elements, they always end up including and affecting the other two.