Dear Friends,
It seems to me, all ideologies are merely fads. By ideology I mean a simplified description of reality and total solution to its problems. They pop onto the scene with a bang, hang around for a while, then are killed by reality or die in an old folks home surrounded by aging sycophants. That’s the life-cycle of fads. Look at anything from the 1970s. The clothes, the colors and the hairstyles… they’re all dated. Who clings to the ideology of Caesar today? What temple exists to plumb the depths of Mohism? They don’t exist, because ideologies are fads that have a day and are killed or pass of old age. If we don’t let our ideologies destroy the world, the future will look at our ideologies and laugh at our stupidity. That’s because all ideologies, no matter how zealous their members, are fads that will have a heyday then die.
A fad is a mind-virus, an idea that captures the mind. Notions like new world order, color revolutions, and the trans thing are capturing ideas. While not organic, the elite spend enormous political, legal, and economic capital promoting them. Moreover, the moment that capital runs out, they will fade into oblivion. That’s the fate of all fads. This applies to inorganic fads the most. Regardless of the source, fads capture the minds of the youth the most. This is because, without much life experience they are easily manipulated. That’s another reason fads have life-cycles, new generations demand new fads. Ideologies are simply that. Moreover, an ideology can appear new by changing its name, as collectivism has done so many times. That has allowed it to extend its lifespan.
A fad has a life-cycle. Anarchy was a real problem at the turn of the Twentieth Century. Anarchists exploded bombs. The US battled that ideology by forbidding anarchists entry. That would not be allowed today because today’s ideology has embraced civilizational suicide. This too is a fad that has a lifespan. It will end if it succeeds, we could smarten up, or we could fight it. Cutting off the money supply is crucial to killing an inorganic ideology. State funded ideologies depend on state funding. Our elites ideology to deal with our present existential threats is to coddle our sworn enemies instead of fighting them, as they did the anarchists. That too is a fad that will end someday, by force or abandonment. Fad ideas like ideology generate tension because they seldom comport with reality.
The fads of ideologies try to make sense of a complex world by simplifying it. The weather is bad today, it’s man-made climate change and we need to become slaves to the State to fix it. There is inequality in the world, well then the only solution is to collectivize. If kids can’t read when they get out of high school, the answer must be to put more money into the school. These are notions that have become inorganic ideological descriptions and solutions to complex problems. This is why ideological solutions to complex problems are category errors. Such “solutions” are a different category than the problem they supposedly address. Moreover, they apply single point solutions to a dancing landscape. This is why ideology has a lifespan… eventually the failure points become undeniable.
Since ideologies are fads we should treat them as such. No fad will save the world but one could end it. This makes the best ideology no ideology. Keep a pragmatically open mind and believe a solution only until a better one comes along. This means clinging to an ideology to keep us free, prosperous, and healthy… is a fool’s errand. Religion and philosophy, however, aren’t fads since they provide guidance not solutions. It’s not a fad if it’s a recognition of reality. Birds don’t have fads but they do have families. Most ideologies are inorganic. They’re imposed from above and shilled with a utopian message, all we need do is be zealots. In this fads excel. Collectivism then is like a pet rock. Someday it’ll be tossed into the yard like so many stones. Until then, it and all the chic ideologies do their harm.
Sincerely,
John Pepin
