Against ideology

and against labels

As I wrote here, I don’t really like the sense of tribalism (or collectivism) even though, humans are cooperators by nature. We should be a group of one, a religion of one, an ideology of one and we definitely are a worldview of one. We are people, and a key thing about people is that we’re exceedingly unique. Your understanding of the ideas in a book will always be different from mine, especially because words are always interpretations (we constantly make assumptions about the context, our previous knowledge on the topic will influence our interpretation, etc). And because you will never agree with an idea 100% (unless it came from your own mind) you should try to reject any kind of label (Christian, Popperian, Objectivist, etc). Of course in real life it’s way harder to do this and those labels exist because they are useful shortcuts. The main problem with being labeled is that once you’re labeled, you answer to the label. Suddenly it stops being about the ideas per se, and becomes about the sketch in people’s minds about whatever their interpretation of the idea is. After all, people already know what Popperians (for example) think. So this is a shortcut, there’s no need for further explanation. Details are dismissed and now it’s about what Popper said or did and not about the ideas, it became about the source rather than the content of the ideas. You should talk about the ideas rather than the people, if you’re talking about epistemology you don’t need to necessarily talk about Popper but I do think that if you’re in some way using Popper’s ideas you should suggest at the end of the conversation for that person go and check the work of Popper and the ideas by himself. “Take no one’s word for it”, after all it’s your interpretation of the ideas and that will be different from the interpretation of any other person. Once you tell someone that you’re a Popperian (or christian, etc) they’ll automatically sketch a picture in their mind of who you are based on what they already know about Popper. You could use those labels like Popperian (for example) when you’re in personal spaces, but by definition, those people in the personal space already know who you are and what you believe in, the problem is with people outside of the personal space. Also, we should want to improve our ideas and correct the errors they have. When we’re stuck with a label, we’re stuck with the exact same idea but we all should want to be better Popperians (for example) in the sense that we will correct some errors Popper did and add some things on our own. So when we don’t label ourselves as Poppperians (for example) we don’t need to answer regarding the label which allows us to modify the ideas and turn them into *our* ideas, it stops being Popper’s ideas even though they originally came from Popper’s mind. We’re also more likely to enter the “war state” when we label ourselves, we’re more likely to caught ourselves defend the ideas rather than explaining them. By definition, Christianity is different from Islam just like Popperian epistemology is different from Kantian epistemology so when we label ourselves as Christians or Popperians, the natural tendency is that we’ll have a conflict with Islam and Kantian epistemology, respectively. But this doesn’t happen when we reject those labels precisely because we didn’t identify with any idea even though we do have our preference of the ideas, we allow ourselves to see the best in each ideas and to correct their mistakes. Furthermore, when we identify ourselves with an idea we’re ultimately defining ourselves, but people can’t be defined because we’re constantly changing and our mind is ever in flux. What I believe yesterday might not be (and for every effects won’t be sometime) what I believe today. And my interpretation of Popper’s work will change over time as I become more knowledgeable and therefore, given one time I may not agree with Popper on a subject but tomorrow I may agree with him on that same subject.

The other day someone told me that even though they have the opportunity, they won’t be going to a lecture of a famous intellectual just because they don’t agree with his ideas. It seems to me that they are in “self rejection” and they don’t even plausibly think that one idea better than theirs might come along. But, again, we know that the way society improves is by questioning our current ideas so we can find mistakes and correct them. And the attitude described previously is an attitude of someone who doesn’t want to change hence of someone who doesn’t want to improve. If you believe your ideas are correct (or even just better), then exposure to alternatives shouldn’t be a threat. The only way exposing yourself to new ideas becomes dangerous is if you implicitly believe that your current ideas are fragile, that if you encounter disagreement, that might dissolve them. To challenge those ideas feels like self harm. But there’s something deeply wrong with this, it treats people as if they need to be protected from ideas, it automatically assumes that being wrong is lethal rather than informative.

I think most people take their ideas too seriously. You are not your ideas, you merely have ideas. Criticize your own ideas and don’t be upset when others criticize your ideas. They are not criticizing you personally, they are criticizing your ideas. But it’s also good to defend your ideas and criticize criticisms. The way to make progress is to create (or conjecture) criticize and repeat.