Everything Is F*cked

Ideological Religions
Ideological  religions  generate  hope  by  constructing  networks  of  beliefs  that
certain  actions  will  produce  better  outcomes  in  this  life  only  if  they  are
adopted  by  the  population  at  large.  Ideologies  are  usually  “isms”:
libertarianism,  nationalism,  materialism,  racism,  sexism,  veganism,
communism, capitalism, socialism, fascism, cynicism, skepticism, etc. Unlike
spiritual  religions,  ideologies  are  verifiable  to  varying  degrees.  You  can
theoretically test to see whether a central bank makes a financial system more
or  less  stable,  whether  democracy  makes  society  fairer,  whether  education
makes  people  hack  one  another  to  pieces  less  often,  but  at  a  certain  point,
most ideologies still rely on faith. There are two reasons for this. The first is
that  some  things  are  just  incredibly  difficult,  if  not  impossible,  to  test  and
verify.  The  other  is  that  a  lot  of  ideologies  rely  upon  everyone  in  society
having faith in the same thing.
For  instance,  you  can’t  scientifically  prove  that  money  is  intrinsically
valuable. But we all believe it is, so it is.
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You also can’t prove that national

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citizenship is a real thing, or even that most ethnicities exist.
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These are all
socially constructed beliefs that we’ve all bought into, taken on faith.
The problem with evidence and ideologies is that humans have a tendency
to take a little bit of evidence and run with it, generalizing a couple of simple
ideas to entire populations and the planet.
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This is our human narcissism at
work—our  need  to  invent  our  self-importance,  our  Feeling  Brain  run  amok.
So, even though ideologies are subject to evidence and verification, we’re not
exactly  good  at  verifying  them.
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 Humanity  is  so  vast  and  complex  that  our
brains  have  trouble  taking  it  all  in.  There  are  too  many  variables.  So,  our
Thinking Brains inevitably take short-cuts to maintain some otherwise shitty
beliefs. Bad ideologies such as racism or sexism persist due to ignorance far
more than malice. And people hold on to those bad ideologies because, sadly,
they offer their adherents some degree of hope.
Ideological  religions  are  difficult  to  start,  but  they  are  far  more  common
than spiritual religions. All you have to do is find some reasonable-sounding
explanation  for  why  everything  is  fucked  and  then  extrapolate  that  across
wide populations in a way that gives people some hope, and voilà! You have
yourself  an  ideological  religion.  If  you’ve  been  alive  for  more  than  twenty
years,  surely  you’ve  seen  this  happen  a  few  times  by  now.  In  my  lifetime
alone  there  have  been  movements  in  favor  of  LGBTQ  rights,  stem  cell
research,  and  decriminalizing  drug  use.  In  fact,  a  lot  of  what  everyone  is
losing  their  shit  about  today  is  the  fact  that  traditionalist,  nationalist,  and
populist ideologies are winning political power across much of the world, and
these ideologies are seeking to dismantle much of the work accomplished by
the neoliberal, globalist, feminist, and environmentalist ideologies of the late
twentieth century.