Ideology is for suckers

I’ll take my university education without political hegemony, please

Tessa Vanderhart Staff

When Oscar Wilde wrote “consistency is the last refuge of the unimaginative,” he must have been thinking about ideologies.

It’s hard to make a case against certain omnipresent beliefs, ideologies, precisely because they are so widelyheld and seemingly universally popular. It’s painfully easy, however, to poke holes in those beliefs, held as strongly as they are blindly, and in the name of ideology.

Every society has its prevailing ideologies. Unfortunately, university campuses — where free speech ideologues would hope to see the most diversity of opinion, the most debate — have instead become incestuous oligopolies for the most dangerous of philosophies, polemical and unsubstantiated, of all political stripes and all, unfortunately, failing to effectively criticize others or accept criticism of themselves. Debate became dogma, politics became polemics, and any attempt to express a minority opinion has been co-opted by the need to ascribe to this or that set of principles.

Perhaps the ideas that the ideologues hold so dear are right. Perhaps — as seems more likely, to an unprincipled fool such as myself — they’ve been duped: the ideologues are so ready to give their hearts and souls, but they don’t also require the exertion of mental energy. Instead, often in the absence of debate, we are indoctrinated into believing that anyone who dares criticize our beliefs is wrong, wrong, wrong!

No logic can escape criticism entirely — but being unable to defend inane social norms is one thing, while the ideologies espoused by, frankly, most ideologues are all too often strewn together haphazardly and in dire need of critique.

Unfortunately, there seems to be less and less criticism; I wonder why.

Universities (hence the name) are supposed to be fortresses of diversity, bastions of critical thinking, or so we’re told. Ideologies do just the opposite. They restrict perspectives; they constrain the free expression of ideas; they, in effect, limit intelligence. They even — shudder! — lead people to believe that everything is reducible to the market.

Political and social issues frequently portrayed as black-and-white are rarely so simple. Yet, many students appear to be too indoctrinated into the tactic of writing positional essays that they forget to be expositional, to question polemics — often becoming polemical themselves.

When did holding a certain type of belief become an excuse to turn one’s brain off? When did the simple fact of believing, particularly if the belief is political and not religious, become a shield against any and all criticisms?

Now, this criticism can be applied equally — whether you believe in equality or not — and liberally, whether you think liberals (however you choose to characterize “liberals”) are the bane of society. We all fall victim to it, because it is so very tempting to skip the step between discourse and position, and fall instead into the murky waters of belief.

Once belief sets in — whether it is that tuition is too high, that nuclear weapons are sexy, or that wearing pants should be optional — criticism effectively dies, and with it, any hope you may have had of persuading others to join your cause rationally.

Extrapolated to the greater university community, it appears that political ideologies spread more like sexually transmitted diseases than through reasoned and intelligent debate, and to a fence-sitter, a moderate (a horrible thing for ideologues), the gentle demise of expression ultimately leads to the demise of the intelligence of the ideologies, from passionately held to subjunctive. Unfortunately, for our collective descent into syphilitic dogmatism, there is no cure other than legitimate and reasoned criticism.

Of course, criticizing everything for the sake of being critical is no better, and perhaps even worse, when it becomes an ideological position itself. Being open to all perspectives, a claim all too often unsubstantiated by ideologies of any and all stripes, is a claim that should only be trusted as far as it is tested.

When valued for its seeming credibility, anti-ideology is just as foolish, even just as cult-like, as any ideology, and centrism for pragmatic reasons is inherently indictable. Failing to ascribe to anything remotely resembling a dogma appears to be the only way to avoid this hazard, par for the course of academia, though it leaves one open to criticisms from any and all sides.

But the type of ideology aside, the real problem is being sucked into beliefs that can’t be substantiated, at the very least with the courage of the believer’s convictions. Then, not only do my refutations of anything and everything fall on deaf ears, but the impetus to debate dies, and with it, some part of our society becomes inherently more stupid, more gullible and less like something I’d like to be a part of. Even if I’m not an agent of social change, that’s still disheartening.

Here’s to sitting on the fence — one way or another, at least you’re not a sucker.

Tessa Vanderhart is a second-year political studies student and the Manitoban’s News Editor. If you question this article, she’ll break down in tears and never speak to you again.