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COMER Columns
Articles published in "Economic Reform"
the Journal of the 'Committee on Monetary and Economic Reform'COMER Column #12 Vol. 13, No .8, (August 2001).
A Systems View: Ideology as Insanity
In a recent book, Body of Secrets (1), in accounts taken from the archives of the U.S. National Security Agency (NSA), historian James Bamford recounts in detail the incident on June 8, 1967, in which Israeli armed forces attacked the American electronic surveillance ship Liberty in the eastern Mediterranean. The attack was deliberate, intended to sink the ship and all on board. Occurring at the time of the 1967 Israeli-Arab war, Israel claimed that the action was an accident. This claim was publicly accepted by the U.S., although the facts, even at the time, indicated otherwise. It appears from Bamford's detailed account that the action was seen by the Israeli high command as justified by their needs to ensure secrecy.
This example illustrates the overriding logic of any ideology which leads to absolute and uncompromising positions. The logic of an ideology tends to involve clear objectives, a closed system, and required action - regardless of "collateral damage". Similar logic led Timothy McVeigh to perpetrate the Oklahoma bombing, and anti-abortion activists to murder. There is no end of such examples.
By ideology we may understand a set of beliefs or teachings which provides the basis for a political, economic or other system - usually as a reflection of the needs and aspirations of an individual, group or class of people. In former times, such beliefs could be held as absolutes, as divine dictates, but in this postmodern world claims for such absolutes are no longer credible to most educated people. It is a source of ongoing tragedy that states and religions continue to insist upon the absolute validity of their own preferred ideologies. Such institutions become trapped in the logic of systems which their own citizens and adherents know to be matters of convention and belief, and which may be outdated and mistaken, and which become lies when they command silence. As guides to life they promote insanity.
The true believer thinks he or she has the answers to questions which he does not understand, and so may come to believe in impossibilities. When others are asked to meet his expectations they can only fail and/or be corrupted. This becomes a potent source of irreconcilable personal and societal problems.
In the words of Carl Jung; "Our blight is ideologies - they are the long-expected Antichrist!"(2 ) This may also be what Camus had in mind when he wrote "Whoever today speaks of human existence in terms of power [and] efficiency is an actual or potential assassin" (3 ). For contrast, and in confirmation of the negative effect of ideology, we have the view of Jiang Qing, wife of Mao Tse-tung, that "There cannot be peaceful coexistence in the ideological realm. Peaceful coexistence corrupts." (4 )
Obviously we all need ideas in which to believe and values in which to trust. But foremost among these must be the humility to recognize human limitations and the need to be open to learning. A particular difficulty lies in the fact that ideologies tend to be profoundly unconscious. As the water is for the fish, they provide the premises within which most people like to live, closed systems which do not allow for uncomfortable novelties or comparisons. Under such conditions, evidence is selected to reinforce the prevailing assumptions.
There are those who hold that an ideology as a system of belief stands against chaos, and there can be some psychological truth in this. Threats posed by enemies, ideological or not, may be very real. And at the level of sheer survival it is not to be wondered that men and women are sometimes willing to kill those who threaten their families and communities. Moreover, such concerns and objectives may be well served by ideas which promise to not only meet needs but also to provide meaning and hope. Grounded as they may be in deep anxieties and fear, such ideologies may be intractable indeed. But where beliefs are accepted on grounds that are inadequate or imposed by rote without understanding, mischief must follow. The alternative to ideology is an awareness that there may be better alternatives.
Few of us are exempt from fear of change. In our own capitalist society it is obvious that all investors have an interest in stability. All those who have saved and have retirement or pension plans have a vital stake in economic stability. It is easy to equate stability with continuing existence of present arrangements, but we know that true stability really requires adaptive shifts, perhaps new levels of equilibrium. To treat capitalism as an ideology rather than as a system open to critical review and development is to express a closed mind and court trouble.
World prospects depend greatly upon cooperation. Where population growth threatens to overwhelm world capacities for production of food and energy, methods for resolving conflicts and reaching useful agreements are even now matters of life and death for many. The vital question concerns the kind of changes that will best preserve the gains that have been made.
To address this question requires more than a blind defence of the status quo or of any particular ideology. It requires an adequate method, a systems approach involving conscious attention to all relevant factors and needs, with input from all those affected. In contrast, management in the abstract or ideological terms (e.g. "capitalism" and "free trade") by those in privileged positions or able to manipulate to their own advantage within existing systems can only bring misfortune.
Underlying current drives for protest and social change are certain legitimate demands for the recognition of fundamental human needs as well as rejection of the blind ideological constraints that aggravate our difficulties. Acceptable policies cannot be predicted in detail, of course, since they will be the outcome of processes of democratic inquiry and development, but the general constraints are clear. But to oppose such critiques with police and tear gas or worse is a confession of impotence. To the extent that our leaders do not know what else to do, our problems are only aggravated.
Under conditions of war, we expect our leaders to seek advice from the experts, which would then be the military. Where we need to maintain the peace, our leaders need a different kind of advice (not only that of police!) and may be judged harshly if they lack the wit to avail themselves of more appropriate counsel. A systems approach which recognises the complexity of human existence, the need for openness and for possibilities of learning, provides an essential key.
As Keynes wrote: "The ideas of economists and political philosophers, both when they are right and when they are wrong, are more powerful than is commonly understood. Indeed the world is ruled by little else. Practical men, who believe themselves to be quite exempt from any intellectual influence, are usually the slaves of some defunct economist." (5)
The pressing question for our time is what we can do to cultivate and make better use of constructive ideas. That is the proper level of strategic concern. We cannot hope for perfection, but we must reexamine and reject ideological formulas which have been found wanting - authoritarian belief systems of whatever kinds, religious, economic and political. We can find needed guidance in terms of open systems which allow for creative redirection of efforts to meet human needs, evaluation of results, and for correction of errors. The decisive problems lie at the level of values and ideas which have the potential to guide and structure the systems we need. Until we make use of the systems methods appropriate to such problems we can make little progress.
References
(1) Bamford, James. Body of Secrets: Anatomy of the Ultra-Secret National Security Agency,
Ch. 7, "Blood" - Doubleday (2001)
(2) Jung, Carl. The Tibetan Book of the Great Liberation (1954)
(3) Albert Camus. Quoted in: Paul West, The Wine of Absurdity (1966).
(4) Stanley Karnow, Mao and China:Revolution to Revolution (1972).
(5) John Maynard Keynes. The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money, Ch. 24, "Concluding Notes" (1936).