The Dangers of Certainty

I have a confession to make. I am not a hard core ideologue of any sort and, to be quite honest, I have a difficult time trusting hard core ideologues. Over the years I’ve come to see that many people equate ideological ideas with being principles, and they hold on to an ideology over rationality and practicality. The worst thing of all is that ideologues tend to be certain about their ideas. In the marketplace of ideas, they really have no need to engage other perspectives because they are right.

There are dangers of certainty that lurk. Big ones.

The first is this. Ideologies are based on ideas and not based on things that necessarily work all the time.

Converse opposites about the marketplace give us some insight into this.

Some will say that the market can solve everything as long as the government stays out of things. We all learned about a laissez-faire approach to things. Leave it alone and it will itself. Any idea of outside regulation is anathema. The problem is that when there is no outside regulation and laissez-faire is the attitude, the market consistently doesn’t fix it. The Great Depression and our current economic woes can be traced to a lack of regulation and a lack of restraint. The market didn’t fix it. And our health care system, if people believe that the market alone can fix this, I would be willing to discuss you purchasing a certain bridge in Brooklyn that is for sale...

But the converse opposite is that the government should take care of everything. This also doesn’t work. A competitive marketplace means that people who work harder, get more training, etc., can become more successful. If the government treats everyone the same, if the government takes care of everything, it kills the motivation for people to improve.

Practicality seems to indicate that the way we deal with things is a balance between regulation and free market. But ideologues are not about practicality; they are about ideologies and the ideology is always right.

Secondly, ideologies tend to be dangerous because the are right and are generally insistent that everyone abides by their thoughts.

In religious life many people have a low regard for Christianity as it is perceived to be cruel and judgmental looking to find fault with people who do not live according to ‘Christian’ standards, or more interestingly enough, what they claim Christian standards to be.

I was greatly offended by recent comments by Mike Huckabee who indicated that this year’s election was not impacted by people voting for values. The reality is that it was not impacted by people voting for HIS values; everyone votes on values. It is just that values are usually more subjective in nature than strictly objective. He either intentionally or unintentionally insinuated that people had no moral vision, whereas many people did vote their moral vision. It was just not his. And it was not his vision of what Christianity ought to be.

In governments, however, the last century demonstrated the danger of ideologues running the nations.

In 1917 left wing ideologues took over Russian and created the Soviet Union. The Soviet Union looked to purge dissidents and was cruel to its citizenry and proved to be perfectly willing to provide measures for mass extermination of people.

In the 1930's right wing ideologues took over Germany. Germany looked to purge dissidents and was cruel to its citizenry and proved to be perfectly willing to provide measures for mass extermination of people.

Worse yet, both were successful in their extermination attempts and both ultimately proved to be dangerous and complete failures.

Ultimately ideologues tend to be wing nuts. They will hold onto their ideas, good, bad, or indifferent and proclaim that these ideas are their principles. It doesn’t matter which side of the bench they are sitting on, the left or the right. In either case, when others get off the other end, they will always end up on the floor cursing at the others, because the other people were the ones who are wrong. Ideologues are certain of their rightness and in that they are dangerous.