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Back in Stalin’s day, the White Sea Canal was constructed. This canal was created ahead of schedule and lauded as a great achievement for the Soviet Union.
On the downside, the canal was built by forced labor and was a true engineering disaster. Among the problems was the fact that the canal was too shallow for the ships that were supposed to travel it.
While the canal is presented as an engineering disaster, it also serves as a monument for the political mind and its ability to ignore reality (or at least pretend to do so). As noted above, the failed canal was presented as a great triumph and treated as such, even in the face of clear and obvious empirical evidence to the contrary.
While the White Sea canal is an extreme example, the same sort of phenomenon can be observed on a smaller scale across the ideological spectrum. When the success of a project is tied into the ideology, it is often simply seen as a success whether it is or not. The same sort of effect can also happen in reverse. That is, something that is a success can be regarded as failing (or being a worse failure than it is) based on ideology. While what counts as success can be relative to ideology, there also are some objective standards. For example, a canal that cannot handle the ships that are supposed to travel it is a failure.
This phenomenon is a matter of significant concern. After all, if people tend to judge success or failure based on ideology, then they will not be capable of making objective assessments of plans and projects. This will, obviously enough, lead to poor decision making.
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To adhere to an ideology–any ideology–is to be an idiot.
Dear Dr. M – I’ve been agonizing over this a lot. Please help me decide what to do. If my political ideology is the correct one, can I be certain I’ll make “objective assessments of plans and projects”? Because I’ve got some great ideas I’d like to implement to make my world better. . . Signed AM
Even if you have an ideology that is correct (that is, both factually accurate and correct in regards to normative values) then you still might not be objective. But, if you have assessed the factual accuracy of the factual claims that make up your ideology and rigorously assessed the value aspects as well, then you are off to a good start of making sound judgments.
Just be sure that the ideology has not deluded you into thinking you have it right. 🙂
Thank you Dr. M. I know I’m right. They caught me this time but not the next. I’m sure I’ll beat the rap in your courts. All holiness be to God. Your friend, Abdul.
Fortunately, as Ralph Peters states, we’ve moved away from the disastrous century of ideology and back to history’s default reason for killing each other: Blood and Faith.
No faith–including militant Islam–could possibly match the killing power of idealogy.
magus, how do you distinguish faith from ideology? I frankly don’t see much difference in an operational sense.
Make of these what you will:
http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/ideology?r=75 (note spec. 1 and 4 here)
http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/religion?r=75 (1,2,6 here)
http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/faith?r=75 (2 and 4 here)
Make of these what you will:
http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/ideology?r=75 (note spec. 1 and 4 here)
http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/religion?r=75 (1,2,6 here)
http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/faith?r=75 (2 and 4 here
I understand what you’re saying, TJ. And yes, many times they are indistinguishable.
But when I look at Leninism and Naziism, I think of pure ideologies. Perhaps long ago, religious belief comprised most ideologies, but as the Western world became as it is, ideologies seemed to become the antithesis of religion.
Since WWII and particularly since the 60s, the West seems to have fallen into the classic post-modern mindset. Cynicism, a lack of purpose, God is Dead, a palateable feeling of hoplessness–as if nothing gets better, there is no real solution, no real truth.
I think the post-modern belief is the result of having overcooked ourselves in the ideological ovens of 1915-1960. We boiled over. The good thing about post-modernism is that you don’t have the will to be terribly destructive. The bad thing is that you don’ have the will to be terribly destructive.
One thing we can say for the Age of Idealism, is that those people were not cynics. It’s interesting to think that the most destructive period in human history was spurred on by unrestrained hope and positivism.