What is there about ideologies that create such terrible consequences? Are they just all bad? Well, it’s not that simple. The problem is that my detailed research into the drivers of these bad outcomes shows that they are principally caused by three widely accepted, but seriously flawed ideas, i.e., supremacism, absolutism, and utopianism, which are deeply embedded in the leading belief systems.
The first driver is supremacism: Many ideologies are based on the supremacist idea that certain people or groups in this world are inherently superior to all others and have the right to dominate, control, and even eliminate those others in the interests of protecting their status and position in society. Supremacist ideas are generally associated with self-esteem and superiority-driven ideologies, like imperialism, nationalism, racism, and ethnocentrism, all of which have a track record of triggering very bad outcomes, like mass killings and group repression.
These ideas continue to gain credence, even though all endeavors to prove that any group of people is sustainably superior to any other has been invalidated many times. In fact, human history is really about the rise and fall of nations, with once dominating groups yielding to the next more powerful groups. In pre-modern times, Mesopotamia, Persia, Assyria, Egypt, Greece, and Rome rose to positions of superiority and dominance only to be ousted by others who followed and took their place as the societal leaders; In the modern era, Western European countries dominated the world scene for centuries. But now nations that were once considered primitive, like China and India, are surpassing them and becoming pre-eminent powers.
The second driver is absolutism: Many people hold the absolutist view that there is only one ultimate truth, with all others being in error. Further, they argue that they must block the rational consideration of alternative ways of thinking and, if necessary, eliminate anyone who is holding such positions. They seek to dominate by suppressing, excluding, and denying the existence of any rival views. Absolutism is used to suppress all competitive ideas from ever rising and challenging their narrative. And it is a major cause of ideological struggles and conflicts as competing religions and political groups will fight to the death to protect their exclusive position.
Absolutist ideas derive from every human’s need for the elimination of uncertainty and doubt and are typically associated with totalitarian dictatorships and conservative religions that manipulate, suppress, or manufacture the truth and forcefully punish deviation from that “truth”. These ideas continue even though it has been clearly demonstrated that mankind is incapable of developing absolute truths. As with the rise and fall of empires, human history is all about the rise and fall of ideas, like Marxism, National Socialism, and Biological Racism. All these ideologies once had millions of followers and were a dominating force in society, and are now discredited.
The third driver is utopianism: Many groups of people try to control their existential anxiety by clinging to the utopian belief that there is an ideal outcome to this life—whether that be getting to heaven or creating the perfect society in this world. More radical religions, communism, national socialism, and those who want to “make something great again” have been the leading exponents of this kind of thinking and have caused immense human suffering in the name of achieving these ideals. The ultimate problem is that no utopian experiment has ever achieved its lofty goals; and anytime perfecting mankind or an individual society has been the primary goal of an ideological movement, serious problems have resulted.
The problems and fallacies of these three consequential ideas, supremacism, absolutism, and utopianism, are discussed in detail in Path to Power, Road to Ruin. There is a separate chapter for each. The ultimate reality is that these ideas have always triggered bad outcomes, never survived serious scrutiny as ideas, and all have failed in implementation. Nonetheless, they have continued to have great influence and be continuously accepted. People don’t ever seem to learn from the past. Even when results are disastrous, as they typically have been for many ideologies, they keep recurring. Winston Churchill’s famous quote is instructive: “Is the only lesson of history to be that mankind is unteachable?” It sure seems that way.