Foreign Ideologies
The brain can never conceptualize its entire state. Consequently, no one can ever entirely understand someone else. Every understanding we have of someone is the retroactive filling of someone else’s existence into our existing frame or state of mind. This is rooted in our rational understanding of how we perceive the world, based off of our imitation of how the world works from other people.
Because two people can have different sorts of fantasies from which they view the world, every ideology, or conceptualized state of mind, has defense systems against that information. That is to say, in some frames of mind, someone who spends time doing soccer is perceived as a loser, while in other people’s minds, someone who watches anime is perceived as a loser. This in-group/out-group dynamic allows for stable fantasies for people.
The question then is: what happens when someone within the group has thoughts that do not necessarily align with the group’s conceptual model? I think a good example would be capitalism, where capitalism in SF has both effective altruism and radical capitalist ideals. The thing that’s designed and ends with a social Darwinian dog-eat-dog, kill-or-be-killed mentality is also this moralistic virtue.
Instead of continuing the previous notion, I think things that don’t align with the mentality are informationally ostracized. I’d argue this is actually especially important because there is unique value in looking at frames that don’t exist within your frame. I think the straw man of this is “I believe in diversity, equity, and inclusion.” It’s more that I think a computer scientist should spend time reading English, and a physicist should spend time studying ocean biology.
If Bell Labs has taught us anything, it is that the notion of a single individual going to move the world is not effective. Now, the contradiction here is that, to some extent, yes, I am saying they are able to move the world. They simply have to move the world in positions where they are able to successfully incorporate alternative ideas into their work. That is to say, they should be a collage of people, as opposed to an “individual.” I think Seneca places it nicely with his commentary on reading books to extend one’s own life.
The rise of cheap books like Atomic Habits and The 48 Laws of Power is based off this notion: if you can acquire these heuristic shortcuts, then you can get power and affection and love and all the things that people in the modern age want. You can get tons and tons of pleasure. The funny thing here is, I’m sort of strawmanning this case, but these are texts that everyone knows about. They don’t provide anything interesting.
But their value is that, in a society that doesn’t understand the mechanisms of them, they’re incredibly powerful. They evoke some notion of a sacred power, really. However, these are cheap tricks to acquire things. They don’t require any change in ideology. They just require a rebasement in action. The further step is if you have things that fundamentally reorient ideology while remaining within the dominant ideology.
Some good examples of this, I think, would be highly Marxist capitalists. You can look at Žižek being a prolific writer and the function of that, or you can look at Jane Street, which is one of the biggest quants that operates in the Marxist fashion. When ideologies are inverted or subverted, they get absorbed by the dominant narratives.
I think the greatest extremes are: a guy at the cafe (plain American ideology), a guy who believes in the notion of blackpilling (a modern form of social Darwinism), and a guy who watches vtubers (rejects typical notions of distinctions between fake and real).
“That barista is smoking,” says the American. “Mid-tier normie foid,” sighs the blackpilled. The vtuber fan doesn’t even look up from his 3DS. The blackpilled guy gets up and asks the girl, “Hey, I was wondering if you wanted my number.” The girl agrees.
The barista perceives the blackpilled guy as a normal person at first. The vtuber fan is looked at oddly, but he couldn’t gaf; he’s playing Pokémon Showdown and winning. Whereas the normal guy is annoyed and scrolls Instagram, staring at women dressing scantily for presumably the male gaze.
Ideologies are useful when they are foreign. They interrupt the ostracization process if they are not classified at the forefront.