Politics and Economics: Two Looking Glasses - The Wise World Traveler: Becoming a Part of All that You Meet - page 41

Democracy's imperfections are many and, for many, troubling. Democracy depends on ma-
jority rule, but there is no assurance that the majority will be wise. Nor is there any as-
surance that the majority always understands the consequences of the policy it demands.
Majorities are also tempted to abuse their authority. When Alexis de Tocqueville surveyed
the new American democracy in the 1830s, he was greatly concerned about the “tyranny
of the majority,” that is, the willingness of the majority to shut down or refuse to listen to
challenging opinions.
IDEOLOGIES
The Enlightenment philosopher Montesquieu famously remarked that what is orthodoxy
on one side of a mountain may be heresy on the other side. As wise travelers become aware
of the variety of values and beliefs around the world, they also become aware of the role
that ideology plays in shaping a nation's culture and its dominant values.
Ideology is a word much used and much abused. A simple definition is this: a set of
consistent ideas about ourselves, our society, other people and places, and how the world
works. The word was coined by Count Destutt de Tracy in the eighteenth century to de-
scribe the way people looked at their world, what we might call their world view. Napoleon
coined a derived word, ideologues, to heap scorn on those who opposed his policies. And
Karl Marx extended the meaning of ideology to explain how economic and political elites
impose their views of the world on the working class. Central to all these uses of ideology
is an underlying set of ideas: in human affairs, what we see and what we understand is af-
fected by our values, those ideas we hold dear. Most of us remember the cautionary counsel
of friends and parents: “Seeing is believing.” But the proverb stands cognitive theory on
its head ( cognos is the Greek word meaning to see, hear, and remember). Our values act to
screen our experiences: we see what we wish to see, what we wish to believe. Our values
come partly from our culture, our habits of the heart, and from family and friends.
IDEOLOGY AT WORK
The test of a first rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in the mind
at the same time, and still retain the ability to function.
— F. Scott Fitzgerald, “The Crackup,” Esquire Magazine , February, 1936
Fitzgerald's often-quoted remark speaks to the fact that most of us see the world through
more than one ideology. Wikipedia , the Internet encyclopedia, lists several sets of ideo-
logies in everyday use, such as ideologies emphasizing ethnicity or nationality (including
fascism, racism, Black nationalism); class struggle (including Marxism, Stalinism, Mao-
ism); the individual (including market liberalism, capitalism); the social system emphasiz-
ing collectivity (including socialism, Peronism); territory (including nationalism); religion
(including Christian, Jewish, Hindu, Islam, Zionism); conservatism (including neo-conser-
vatism); others (including federalism, feminism, animal welfare, the natural environment).