Jason Blakely

It’s early, but the unexpected treat of the year so far is Jason Blakely’s Lost In Ideology. In it, Blakely is able to portray all the current and familiar ideologies seemingly as if they were new to him, that is, with perspective. This is something most people simply cannot do. They are so wedded to their liberalism, conservatism, Marxism or what have you, that everything else is wrong or bogus, if not impossible. This of course, is a weakness of all ideologies, and Blakely is able to show precisely why. It is an intellectual breath of fresh air in overheated, illogical, irrational political conflicts.

It begins with a definition/admission: “Ideology is politics in excess - distorted, immoderate and delusional.” With all ideologies, followers are always right, despite facts, history, science, or any amount of proof to the contrary. Pundits rage, terrorists attack, and families split - over nothing. One’s own ideology is always the most reasonable, rational and universal, making it nearly impossible to see anyone else’s as in any way valid. Think Gulliver’s Travels, with the Big Enders warring with the Little Enders.

The book’s chapters are, of course, ideologies: liberalism, conservatism, White Supremacy, Marxism, fascism, feminism – even ecologism. They all suffer from the same defects. All have proponents willing to die for them, and kill anyone who doesn’t see it their way.

It is good that Blakely begins with liberalism, because it and conservatism are the most common ideologies in these parts. If he can demonstrate how they are inadequate to the task when not plainly and impossibly compromised and wrong, he can open readers’ eyes to the rest of the world. Which they clearly cannot do themselves, or we wouldn’t be where we are today. We are boiled frogs, it seems.

For liberalism, including neoliberalism, libertarianism, free-marketers and the like, Blakely points to contradictions worthy of a cult. “Leaving everything to laissez-faire markets leads to self-defeating outcomes that paradoxically undermine individual autonomy,” normally the main selling point of this ideology. On progressives, “flawed assumptions of autonomy as natural and atomistic lead to situations in which large swaths of society have their agency and their very lives negated in the name of some other person’s ‘freedom.’” Liberals believe that “progressivism drags society down towards despotism.” Meanwhile, it is the extreme right that is leading the world to back to authoritarianism and fascism. Yet libertarianism “thinks of itself as the guardian of a quasi-scientific theory of prosperity and efficiency” though every place it is implemented falls apart.

As for conservatives, they tear at each other over sacred tradition, and have never implemented anything substantial or longlasting. It is a contradiction of mythical policies and successes that never were and cannot be, based on the past being more important than the present, never mind the future.

Fascism is proudly built on “the beneficial inequality of men.” “National rank and order is the goal” and violence and brutality are the means to get there. It lives in direct opposition to conservative gradualism and socialist egalitarianism, Blakely says. White supremacy finds solace and comfort there.

Meanwhile “nationalism is so omnipresent that many do not even recognize it as an ideology.” He says it tries to hide its cultural roots while pretending to be primordial: “Fascism and authoritarianism thrive in a world where dialogue makes no difference and everything consists of raw power struggles.” Sounds like the USA in 2024.

Readers will see that being “ideologically monolingual” is dangerous ignorance, and as widespread as any disease ever has been. This is why there is so little understanding among groups – even within the same ideology. This lack of perspective eliminates any hope of peace or tranquility.

The root cause of this malaise, he says, is that people have forgotten that politics is cultural, not scientific, not God-given, not immutable, not for all time. Cultural context, be it local, regional or national, determines the politics and the prevalent ideology. And every ideology varies within its geographical area as well. Trying to keep up is hopeless. Yet understanding their existence is key.

Ideologies run a full range, from left to right, libertarian to progressive, and so on. For every seemingly solid ideology, say conservative, there is a full spectrum of customized ideologies, from paleo to compassionate to progressive, for example. The same goes for Marxism, socialism and liberalism – they all vary crazily across the spectrum, leading to fights within the camp. One has only to look at Republican infighting in Congress.

Nor is it a flat scale from one extreme to the other. Extreme right fanatic Barry Goldwater, of all people, discovered ideology was circular. In the early 1960s (at his peak), he claimed that he had better understanding and conversations with the extreme left than with his own Republican party. The extreme left is more like the extreme right than it is like with middle of the road. Ideologies could fill out a giant matrix across all of them.

The meeting of different ideologies can have all kinds of unintended effects. Blakely gives the dramatic example of the Dutch buying Manhattan from the Lenape living there. The Dutch were as market-oriented as could be, with their motto “Christ is good, but trade is better.” The Lenape were all about community and Mother Earth. They thought payment from the Dutch was a generous but unnecessary gift for sharing the island, because selling it was a daft concept. No one owned the island or could buy it. The land belonged to all. Selling land was a nonsensical absurdity. In their ideology, it would not have occurred to them that accepting some tools and trinkets meant they could not set foot on the island ever again. But to the Dutch, this was blatantly obvious and basic. For Blakely, “the more conversant one becomes in multiple ideologies, the less prone one is to treat a favoured politics as natural or obvious.”

And then, “To proclaim oneself beyond ideology is the surest sign that one is adrift in it.” And that’s whole point and value of the book.

“Time and time again” he says “a given ideology is inferior because it cannot tell its own story as cultural, instead claiming to somehow natural, common-sensical or scientific.” This is misunderstanding inflamed, repeatedly, throughout history. He cites Jeremy Bentham, the father of liberalism, saying “Natural rights” were “nonsense upon stilts.” Yet that’s the libertarian ideology today: a living contradiction.

Ideologies are therefore much like religions, which Blakely flat out refuses to get into, for obvious and valid reasons (though he does say ideologies become more binding than religions). But the similarities and parallels are plain to see. The pressure to mix politics with religion is enormous. Many cannot resist, making a bad situation far worse, splitting ideologues within the same ideology.

One ideology I had not considered before Blakely examined it is ecologism. In the defense of the planet, there is a full range of ideologues from the gentle to the eco-fascists who want walls and borders (ironically) to protect natural systems. This is a typical self-contradiction in the world of ideologies, but I disagree that it even is an ideology. Since ideologies are cultural, and ecology is scientific, it does not qualify.

What I love about this book is how clear it is and how it makes transparent something that clouds absolutely everything involving human interaction. Blakely sets out the premise, and each chapter follows through with a similar examination of a major ideology and some of its innumerable offshoots. He does it in plain, ordinary language that impresses with its simplicity. And power.

The book is tight. The structure is solid, consistent and logical. His paragraphs are bursting with important facts to consider. There is no padding to trim in Lost In Ideology. It doesn’t take a 40 page introduction to bring us to the present state. It seems to be exhaustive, because readers will be able to apply this kind of assessment to any ideology they might be caught up in (once they understand this is how everything works). As someone solely focused on nonfiction for decades, I can credibly say, Lost In Ideology is as close to an ideal nonfiction book as I have ever reviewed. It is a continuous pleasure to read: a revelation and an education. It explains the human condition far better than anything I have reviewed in psychology or history.

This book makes a giant difference in how to look at the world.

David Wineberg… (mehr)

Finished last year, but apparently never updated the status.

An interesting book for a bunch of reasons (e.g. questioning the very idea of 'social science', pointing out the somewhat -I hope?- more obvious idea that social science findings can strongly influence the things they purport to describe, right up to essentially creating the phenomena, etc.)

Somewhat marred by the author's heavy bias to focus on "right" social science (e.g. right-aligned economics) and an almost total ignoring of... well, just *so* much the rest of social science that is 90% "left". Certainly, there have been strong, and in periods dominant, right-leaning schools of thought (the entire "Chicago School" of economics) but, I mean, *nothing* in the entire rest of economics, sociology, psychology, education, etc...? Maybe he just didn't want to get canceled, but the argument itself would have benefitted from applying it to a broader set of cases.

Still, 4-stars. A strong book.… (mehr)