Ideology is an overarching belief system, a framework that influences individual behavior. It is a reference point that may be called upon when considering any decision. It is a way to live. Religions are ideologies and so too is capitalism, Marxism – various ways of seeing the world. Why choose one ideology over another? Perhaps you were born into a particular ideology or set of ideologies. For example, as an Irish boy born at the beginning of the 1980s, I was brought up within a Catholic Christian ideological framework in my family and in my schools. In wider society, Capitalism was and remains the overarching ideology from an economic perspective. Politically, radical neo-liberal policies were adopted in the Western world from the mid to late 80s onwards, following the Reagan-Thatcher administrations of the USA and UK, respectively, which filtered through to the rest of the western countries.
So, we may say that at any one time, we as individuals are being influenced by a range of ideologies, sometimes conflicting with one another, across a wide spectrum of categories, representing the various fields of human endeavor. As mentioned, there can be spiritual ideologies, economic and political ideologies. There can also be social and legal ideologies, social being related to how people behave towards one another – certainly related to spiritual and political ideologies – treat others as you would have them treat you. A code of conduct. Legal ideology – again – how should people be punished if they break the rules? At the moment, there are too many laws and too much restriction on personal freedoms. What other kind of ideologies could ther be? Work ethic, attitude towards art and music, culture. Certainly there are cultural ideologies – what is the best way to create art and how should it be perceived? Positive and negative ideologies conflict. Hitler had a political / social ideology in Nazism that involved the creation of a ‘pure’ race of people. This ideology was very negative if you happened to be a jew at the time. Fundamentalist Islam has an ideology that seeks to remove all other religions. This is negative for anyone that is not Muslim. Ideologies are highly relative. What is good for one person or social group, may be inherently bad for another. Can all these ideologies be allowed to remain in existence – causing conflict, war and harm to humanity? Should different ideologies be mixed together to create one universal ideology? But they are constantly changing as well. Or should a modular approach be taken, which allows all current ideologies to exist but requires them to evolve and develop integrating features that will allow them to peacefully integrate with other ideologies to create a co-existing network of ideologies. This would mean changing certain aspects of ideologies to make them compatible with the others. Any glaring oppositions would need to be written out or compromised/adjusted. In pursuit of harmony. Currently, dissonance exists on a global scale.