© Charles D. Hayes
Have you ever wondered how you were
fortunate enough to have been born in the right country, the right state, the
right city, into the right religion or the right secular worldview, and especially
into the right political party so that your opinion is obviously superior to
those with whom you frequently take issue? If you haven't, you are not alone.
The late Neil Postman wrote that "education
is a defense against culture." His declaration is egregiously underappreciated,
and his observation has much more to do with the existential nature of freedom
and authenticity than most of the New Age remedies made popular in the past
half-century. The prospect of being motivated by ideological forces that one is
unaware of, though they may be crystal clear to others, undermines the very
foundation of freedom and the potential for authenticity.
Postman's remark lies at the heart of
today's great political divide—it's why our current political discourse defaults
to emotional misrepresentation. Until we fully understand the underlying
reality of Postman's admonition, we have little hope of escaping political manipulation.
The headline in this piece poses one of
life's most difficult questions, but one that needs to hold our attention. When
ideas have us as individuals, it means we can be accurately described as
ideologues. Dictionaries define an ideologue as someone who zealously promotes
a body of doctrine. That's where culture comes in because it provides us with ready-to-assume
worldviews. The penalty for disbelieving is to be considered "not one of
us."
We have to learn to keep our culture in
perspective so as not to become easy to manipulate. The only way to do that is
to vastly broaden our intellectual and emotional horizons. One of the most
disappointing attributes of our species is that, in spite of our enormous
brains, we can grow up in enclaves of every imaginable size from family to
nation states while naturally assuming that our particular group is beyond
reproach. We believe that everything we do is automatically justifiable by the nature
of who we are, while we learn to view other poor fools on the planet as barely
more valuable than objects. If they’re deemed too different, we are likely to
view them as evil.
It's helpful to envision ideology as being
analogous to a computer program that's closed to new updates. This is where
zealotry kicks in. Since the code can't be altered, emotionally charged
rebooting becomes compensation strategy. True believers don't modify their
views, regardless of the facts presented. Instead they respond by upping their ideological
passion with hatred and contempt. When this happens at a national level, it's
only a short distance to fascism, as fear of the other becomes a bonding instrument and a rallying point.
If we lie down on a blanket under a
summer sky and relax with our eyes on the clouds, in a short time, the clouds will
appear to begin forming images of all sorts of things from animals and objects to
faces of particular individuals. But these objects are not in the clouds. These
are images in our heads, put there by experience. What we don't see and can't
see in the clouds comprises all of the vast things in the world that we don't
know about. When we compare what we know with what we haven't yet learned, the
difference is so vast and so overwhelming in size and scope that declarations
about our belonging to the most important group of people on the planet seem
like blasphemy.
By the time we reach adulthood we have internalized
a mountain of assumptions about things we've never seriously looked into in
depth. Our brains, however, looking out for our well-being as they do, take
these experiences as precise representations of reality. This is the reason
Postman wondered why learning to ask questions is not one of the main focuses
of education. To him it was unthinkable that we are taught by people suffering from
the same malady we have, people who’ve never critically questioned their own assumptions.
One of life's greatest lessons is that upon close examination things often turn
out to be not as they first appeared. What could be more disturbing than to
discover that your life's goals and ambitions are the result of an ideology about
which you remain unaware?
Once again, ask yourself the headline questions.
By now your answers may be obvious. If they aren't, or if there is any doubt in
your mind, then you have the criteria for more questions. If you determine that
your ideas have you, it can be an enthralling experience to loosen their grip.
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