Introduction
A lot of ideas are on backorder (have some jotted down), but I didn't want to let this particular one slide away. I very briefly ran this basic idea by a professor today and he suggested I look into "The Idea of Justice" by Amartya Sen - I ordered the book and look forward to reading it. In the meantime, I figured to write up some of my thoughts. The ideas I hope to share are undoubtedly incomplete, but at the very least getting this on 'e-paper' will hopefully be an enjoyable experience (and perhaps for anyone reading it as well).
I've had a few questions fermenting the past couple of years regarding ideology and its effectiveness- specifically in the fitness and politics sphere.
There are very experienced and knowledgable people in the political/economic realm that espouse a certain ideology, and you have equally qualified people espousing the opposite side. Take the conservatives vs. liberals; we've seen the story play out throughout history. This isn't just limited to the political sphere. In fitness world you can have people who hold the vegan diet to be the healthiest and equally qualified professionals saying people should eat in accordance with the paleodiet.
My question has been two-fold: How and why does this happen? Can anything be done to get around this?
While I don't think I have the answer, I think that we should step back and try to look at ideology for what it is. And hopefully, in the end, create an open and respectful forum where we can put our common set of beliefs on the table and work towards implementing the appropriate steps in light of the common goals we seek to achieve.
With Regard to Fitness
I first would like to quote a part of my fitness/health blog. I was discussing the question of the various diets out there and the conjecture in the fitness field:
"Each diet does something different. There are thousands of metabolic processes going on at each moment, and each one of those processes is in turn affected by how we eat. As nutritional science progresses, what is "the best" diet might be more of a question of what exactly are you looking to gain, and what you are willing to sacrifice…I think this kind of approach could apply to a lot of different fields in life where there is a lot of contention (politics, for one) but I won't bore you with any of that for now."
(Now's the time to "bore you" :))
The same applies to various training ideologies within the fitness sphere. There are all kinds of different training regimens out there. Even if we were to be able to figure out exactly how a particular training regimen affects a particular person and to which varying degrees, the question of what the goals are remains. High intensity training will affect certain things to varying degrees in a different way than volume based training will. What are we really trying to promote? "Best" in that case is a question of what you are trying to attain (again, all assuming science gets us that far), and one based on overlapping effects (that in turn affect other things…).
And yes, this similarly can be seen in governance.
With Regard to Governance
A few observations I'd like to make regarding an ideology related to governance:
- Ideologies (at least the way they are commonly 'used') are applied to justify/guide various actions in all different kinds of scenarios. That's not to say "X" politician gets up and says "we should do this because of my ideology", but I think we'd be naive to think that there isn't an ideology behind X when X says "let's lower taxes" or "let's increase government expenditures". This, however, just prima fascia seems to be a bit of a brazen approach for politicians to have. Can we really expect a particular ideology to fit an ever-changing society in all different circumstances?
- Further, trying to isolate the variables to prove which particular ideology is "better" is extraordinarily difficult (assuming we can agree what "better" would even look like). Different forms of governance affects many different things in varying degrees (even more so than like in fitness).
I wrote a research report in September of senior year on Reaganomics. In my concluding remarks I mentioned that in the end, judging the efficacy of a particular theory is difficult. In writing this post I dug it up from the archives. Talk about a blast from the past! "First, in the type of globalized economy that the United States is part of today, there are far too many outside factors that affect the growth of a particular nation (other nations’ growth, wars, etc.) – supposed economic indicators such as GDP growth are not too helpful, since it is nearly impossible to isolate factors and determine what the cause really was (i.e., the president’s policy, or another nation’s actions). Another problem arising when analyzing the outcomes of a policy and one that is especially pertinent to Reagan’s time period, is the question: “did it help the economy recover from the recession?” No one can give a verifiable answer. President Obama claims that he will save “millions of jobs”, the assertion, however, cannot be affirmed; at the end of the current recession, no matter how many jobs will be lost or gained, we can never know how many jobs would have been there without Obama’s particular policies."
Looking at Washington and A Possible Method
In regard to the actual situation in Washington D.C. -
What we currently get in the U.S. government is no one particular pure ideology, but a mixture of primarily two and its resulting gridlock. Keeping an open mind about the imperfect nature of ideologies could perhaps lend a certain level of respectable discourse in the political realm. The debates right now revolve around which ideology is right. It instead should revolve around: what are the empirical facts as we currently understand? What kind of society do we wish to promote? How do we do we promote such a society based on the existing facts? What conclusions make sense without coming from an ideological perspective?
So what should we do? Take the example of the post office. Instead of debating something like that with the backdrop of ideology (big vs. small government), let's look at the facts and see its current standing in consideration of the revolution of communication. Let's than look at how it fits in within our mutual understandings of the goods of society. We then can see whether it needs to be reformed or possibly even removed given the evidence of how to best achieve our mutual goals.
A More Reasonable and Moderate Approach
Taking this case by case approach to governance can be quite difficult, and possibly impossible at times.
This notion is also prey to the fact that empirical research is undoubtedly incomplete; and perhaps we even still need ideology is some forms. But here we should distinguish between empirical research and just looking at the world through an empirical lens. The former is complicated and incomplete, and the latter is a holistic approach that will allow for more commonality in understanding. We should first look at the world empirically, evaluate our numerous beliefs, and outline the goals we would like to pursue.
From there we should abstract flexible ideologies to help us, acknowledging that there are different ideologies based on people's individual experiences in life, and that there (for all intents and purposes) is no perfect ideology found. We should respectfully engage in discourse based on the facts, and based on the goods we seek to promote. The result is not one particular clean ideology of how the governance fits with the world, but several different ideas of how particular things work (based on this flexible abstraction of ideals) in different circumstances. It's not about having one overarching idea of how the world works. So someone who thinks that in one particular case we should have a more involved role in government education in a particular public policy should feel just as comfortable in believing the government should have a more limited role in something like a policy on health care.
(By the way, I think we are starting to see this in some cases room for flexibility. Take the question of the multiplier effect for deficit reduction and spending. I was reading about how this tool is tweaked in different ways by economists to take into account GDP and other economic metrics. But even this is still crude. Cutting and spending on different things in the context of various global-political shifts can cause different results.)
Elections should be based, then, not on the party a voter fits into, but the particular goals a person seeks to achieve within the context of the person's particular value and belief system. No one person fits into a box, let alone a country a 300+ million people from all different backgrounds. Let us not treat our box-shaped ideologies as if they can actually fit.
A "Perfect" Ideology?
But even as science and economics gets better, we still get to the question: which of our goals are actually better for society? That, however, is a far better discussion than the current one that falls back on imperfect ideologies on how governance and policies work. I say "imperfect" as I'd be surprised if one of the two main political ideologies presented in modern political American discourse happened to be the best possible.
And here is the difference between health and governance ideologies. In fitness/health it is easier to study and isolate variables. Experimentation is easier, the empirical evidence more quantifiable, and the goals a bit clearer. With governance, however, we can't really risk experimenting with a government dealing with millions of lives, and the goals of governance are all but decided upon (you would think our founding documents would be enough!).
Are we then lost to find the perfect guiding ideology?
"Perfect" is used not as in the one that solves all problems, but as in one that is best suited to promote the goods/goals decided upon. With that said, it may be the case that "there exists A ideology such that A is the best ideology through which to govern" - but if we are to arrive at A, it must first be through looking at the world empirically, evaluating the values and beliefs that we hold, build goals that we wish to achieve, and abstract a governing ideology that takes into account our ever-changing and complex world.
It's not that people won't disagree - after all, people hold different sets of values (even after evaluation). But at least we can see those values for what they are in the current discourse in recognition of our varied life experiences, without being tethered to particular ideology.
Not Just Health/Fitness/Governance
I believe this applies to many of the polarizing ideologies out there in the world. Why? The world is so complex, almost infinitely so. Humans have occupied this earth for such a short period of time - who knows what discoveries and paradigm shifts we go through in the future. If we are to hold one ideology it is this - let us be humble and honest with ourselves and let us be respectful with others.
