The Remorseless Tide of RealityIdeology, unlike philosophy, seeks to remake human nature.
By Thaddeus G. McCotter
April 15, 2022
In what seems like a lifetime ago, a friend explained to me his thumbnail distinction between philosophy and ideology. Philosophy requires one to fit one’s mind to the world; ideology compels one to fit the world to one’s mind. The crux was how each viewed human nature: philosophy accepted the imperfectability of human nature; ideology demanded its perfection.
Within this admittedly narrow limning, one can see how philosophy and ideology respond when confronted by reality. By accepting the imperfectability of human nature, a philosophic attitude encourages intellectual, emotional, spiritual, and societal growth. By rejecting the imperfectability of human nature and recognizing instead only the capricious whims of untrammeled will, the horrific consequences of the ideologues’ effort to fit the world to their minds can be seen from Paris during the 18th-century Reign of Terror and Stalin’s purges to Mao’s “Great Leap Forward” and the killing fields of Cambodia.
Because it believes it already has correctly answered all the great questions of human existence (or at least the ones its adherents care about), ideology requires compelling the less enlightened to conform perfectly with its dictates; thus, ideology’s fundamental purpose is not contemplative but coercive.
Yet, because human nature is not perfectible, the ideologues’ frustration and anger increase as the remorseless tide of reality disproves their secular religion’s promise that the world can be fitted to their mind. When in power, an ineluctable devolution into oppression and barbarity ensues. This is why, when rallying opposition to the excesses of the French Revolution’s Jacobin ideologues, Edmund Burke argued that “we are at war with an armed doctrine.” That war was not merely upon a people; it was upon reality itself.
We see this in our own time in the Left’s approach to sex and gender.
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Source:
https://amgreatness.com/2022/04/15/the-remorseless-tide-of-reality/
