Report 007: Political Ideologies Are Easier to Choose Than to Live With

> Connect the dots

 

 ● People rarely adopt a political ideology after living inside the society it would produce. They choose a mental simulation in which their preferred values prevail and the unwanted consequences remain conveniently indistinct.

 

● The progressive imagines solidarity without bureaucracy, dependency or social conflict; the conservative imagines order without cruelty, exclusion or the abuse of authority. The libertarian sees freedom without abandonment, while the socialist sees security without stagnation, coercion or waste.

 

● An ideology is therefore like a shoe examined in a shop rather than worn across a city. Its principles are visible immediately, but its friction appears only through repetition, compromise and contact with people who do not behave as the theory expected.

 

● Political maturity begins when people stop comparing the ideal version of their own worldview with the worst consequences of everyone else’s. Every ideology becomes dangerous when its believers treat the pain it causes as proof that reality, rather than the idea, has failed.

 

Keep connecting the dots:

 

-James G. March: A Primer on Decision Making
-Thomas Sowell: A Conflict of Visions 

-James C. Scott: Seeing Like a State
-Jonathan Haidt: The Righteous Mind