What is ideology?

What is ideology? In this article we elaborate an analysis of its psychological implications.

Politics is an aspect of life in common that, despite affecting all of us in our lives, seems to be widely repudiated. The linking of the political sphere to the exercise of elites who are responsible for synthesizing the chaotic "popular will" through a kind of electoral alchemy is something that, to say the least, generates disdain for its ineffectiveness in introducing satisfactory changes for the entire population in the economic and social spheres.

However, there are still few people who question classical participatory democracy, following the logic of the lesser evil. This is apparently a centrist position that does not fall into extremism. However, one might ask, what is the psychological nature of the political center?and to what extent it is differentiated from alternative ways of thinking. To do so, we would first have to address the concept of ideology.

What is ideology?

Classically, ideology has been understood as ideology as a system of fundamental ideas that define a way of thinking that is political, religious, cultural, identitarian, etc., specific to a person or collectivity. That is to say, in a certain way, the emphasis is placed on the timelessness and the degree to which these ideas define and are defined by the person or collective that holds them.

From the point of view of cognition it is very comfortable to understand the concept of ideology as something immutable..... Watertight and fixed categories do not lead towards contradiction, they promote conservative ways of thinking: being an anarchist implies not going to vote in general elections, being right-wing implies defending labor flexibility. "I do not vote because I am an anarchist, I am an anarchist because I do not vote. It is a practically tautological reasoning with the internal gears perfectly greased.

The complexity of our conception of the world

Undoubtedly, believing in aprioristically fixed ideologies is comfortable.. However, this belief has the problem of being totally unrealistic. To think that people have concepts, category systems and "thought circuits" fixed in time or even "proper to our being" is a form of dualism that goes against everything we know about psychology and neuroscience. Today we know that any idea is actually the fruit of a network of neural relationships in continuous change, even during old age. There are no fixed ways of seeing reality, and therefore there are even fewer ways of thinking "proper to..." if we take into account that these are in continuous change.

Likewise, the definitions of political ideologies of the academic literature do not exist apart from a reader who will internalize these ideas in the light of his or her past and present experiences and who will also orient his or her conclusions according to his or her objectives and interests.

Between ideas, prejudices and wills

Any idea exists because certain associations between ideas and perceptions of lower hierarchy silence other possible associations of ideas. What happens is that associations of ideas occur within a process of competition and convergence of various fragments of knowledge, Biological impulses, subjective assessments and conclusions of deliberate thought, as Joaquín M. Fuster points out in Cerebro y Libertad (2014). This happens continuously, even while we sleep. As a consequence, our thinking is not rigidly guided by a single integrating principle such as "being right-wing" or "being pacifist", etc.

The term "ideology" refers only to those general guidelines that define ways of thinking, but at the same time implies an inevitable reductionism when it comes to studying something, comparing it with other things, etc. It is useful to speak of ideologies, but it must be kept in mind that what is given in reality is something else: unique and unrepeatable thoughts, profoundly original even though they are based on experiences, memories and previous knowledge, guided only in part by deliberate thought.

This conclusion has serious implications. Consciously renouncing our ability to reduce politics to hermetic and autonomous philosophical systems proposed "from above" implies thinking of politics as a function that is not proper to central decision-making bodies. It implies, at the end of the day, saying goodbye to ideological monism, to textbook politics.