Ideologies are ideas for idiots. They are pre-digested, pre-packaged groupings of half-truths which, on the lips of a good politician, can sound just like real thoughts. Ideologies are attractive in their cohesive simplicity. Every problem has a snappy and evasive answer that somebody else has dreamt up, and there is no need to worry about being consistent because everything fits together like an Ikea bookshelf.
Ideologies provide us with ready made weapons for battle. Imagine! You can win arguments if only you repeat the bullet points of your chosen sect louder, more emphatically, and with more elaborate hand gestures than your opponent! But the arguments that are won in this way were not worth having in the first place. Nobody learned anything; there was no cooperative thrust toward a deeper level of understanding which a constructive discussion can facilitate. I know all of this. I have learned it by looking into the glassy eyes and gaping mouths of all the windbags and ideologues that swarm the streets and offices of my home city of Washington.
But I can feel it happening to me none the less. That slow but seemingly inexorable process by which the dreaded ideology welds itself into the structure of my brain like a computer virus. Now, I have done my shopping. I have selected an ideology that seems fairly reasonable and internally consistent, but at this stage in the game, there is no guarantee that I have not been blinded by its power already.
What, then, are my alternatives? I could aspire to perfect my craft, to become the loudest, least hesitant, most abusive, chest-thumping ideologue that anyone has ever seen, but the power of this achievement lasts only so long as I can trick other people into sharing a room with me. Once they leave, the response by the best of them will be to redouble their efforts to undo whatever grasp I might have on authority. No, this path leads to an empty life.
Instead, these potential enemies, these best among contenders for intellectual supremacy, must be persuaded to give me the best of their insights. Without realizing the implications of their actions, each will aid me on my quest to be both correct and convincing. But first, I must recognize my own psychological tendency to operate using an ideology so that I may move beyond it. This first and most uncommon of conquests will be all that I need to sustain myself, for I do not seek to win arguments.
Once an argument has begun, I have already lost. Rather, I must learn to state the truth with such stunning eloquence that none can resist the urge compelling them to rush to my side. I have spent years sharpening the linguistic weapons of battle, but I would lay them down in an instant for the tools of seduction. Without them at my command however, I must be content to attack at such a dark and unprotected corner of my opponents’ thinking that they do not even realize that their defenses have already been eviscerated. Only then can I feed on their true store of knowledge devoid of the poisons of intrigue and concealed agenda. . . they will share with me of their own accord.
