Political and economic ideologies are almost useless if not practiced
If you ask 10 people, you'll probably get 10 different answers of what they think in terms of ideal political and economic management.
The more opinionated are usually those who are totally ignorant, or, those who have been very active in reading, listening, thinking and discussing about political and economic ideologies. But my question is this: What good is any ideology about political or economic systems if one can't use it?
Introspection
Let's start with the basics. Assuming you have an X or Y ideology on political and economic systems, please take a few seconds and ask yourself this: "I am an advocate of the X or Y system, but do I realistically expect it will be implemented anytime soon?"
....what type of answer did you get?
If you are honest with yourself, you'll typically get a "no".
And now you must ask again: "Why? Why wouldn't my preferred ideology get implemented? What's stopping it?"
After answering that one, you now have some "reasons" on why this won't happen.
Then you have to ask yourself this: "If I know this, deep inside, then why am I wasting my efforts on the ideological front, when I need to be working on those "reasons" that prevent my ideology to be implemented?"
Before going further, ponder that for a while.
Going deeper
The chain-sequence of questions and answers will usually take you to the "immaturity", "malleability", "ignorance", and other "issues" of your fellow men who seem to be supporting the established system out of their ignorance.
Yet, even if you go to the more "enlightened" people (like yourself) who are "above the masses" and "above the sheeple", and have been thinking about these things a lot, you'll see that there is no consensus because everyone seems to have their "superior way".
So, what's the problem now? Is it the sheeple? There are definitely people out there, which you would acknowledge that they are smarter than you, and they have different systems to propose than what you propose. And these smarter people may even disagree between themselves on what is better. You can have 200 different opinions. Can you now start seeing that the problem is not what you thought it is?
Even if we totally "eliminated" the masses from the equation and made a "council" of all the best thinkers who are engaged in the seeking of better political and economical systems, and even if we knew that these thinkers genuinely wanted the best for mankind, they would still disagree between themselves on what is best and what should get implemented.
The reality of power
With all this paralysis-by-extreme-analysis, you'd think humanity wouldn't even have a system to run on. Yet we do have systems in place. Why? Because ultimately, the only thing that counts is power. Those that have power to implement their system do. And that's what they've been doing.
The Elite that control the world's governments are not interested in specific economic or political ideologies. The same moment they promote "freedom" in one country, they use a military junta or an oppressive regime in another - and they are perfectly fine with it. They laugh at every "ideologist", academic, blogger or "intellectual", who tries to convince the world on why a certain system, a certain policy, or a certain way is better - because that's not their modus operandi. The Elite use economic systems and political systems as tools for the perpetuation and expansion of their global power.
If an economic system is good for Elite, for a particular use-case, they'll use it. People, academics, journalists, bloggers debate endlessly on what solutions would be better for the economy or government and yet this is totally irrelevant and useless.
Restated for emphasis: The Elite (who have the power to implement the systems) don't care about ...optimal political systems or optimal economic systems. They care about control. They have the power to implement whatever they want in order to maximize their control of the world - even if that means wasting trillions here and there, even if that means having governments that act against the citizens interests, etc etc.
The workarounds
Instead of being paralyzed by the over-analysis of things, one can focus on practical and usable solutions.
If you are against fiat money, you can dump it and buy property, precious metals, etc.
If you are against oppressive intellectual property rights, you can write open source code (or books) and distribute it for free. Linux and other open-source software are prime examples.
If you are against the economic policies and monetary system, you can create or support something like ...Bitcoin. Bitcoin doesn't wait for the global monetary system or global payment systems to change. It just appears out of nowhere and "competes" with these systems by presenting itself as a new option that embodies the philosophies of its creator in a practical manner. People who are aligned with it use it, people who aren't aligned with it use the established systems.
If you are against the way the mainstream media operate, you can blog. Along with millions of other bloggers you can make a difference in the quality of information.
Even if you don't like the blogging paradigm as is dominated by the main blogging platforms, you can create or support alternatives like Steemit - which embody different philosophical characteristics.
By acting in a philosophically consistent way you can be an example of your ideology while also creating positive change for the world - at least as you see it. But is the impact created by such actions enough to effect changes in the status-quo?
Long-term changes
To create deep and lasting changes in the system a lot more has to be done. The fundamental control structure of the Elite exists for specific reasons. These things rarely change at a fundamental level by the implementation of the various "workarounds".
One will find these reasons if they extend the line of inquiry started earlier: "Why do the Elite have the power that they have? How can they "impose" their ways on billions of people, if the masses theoretically outnumber them and as such can overthrow the established control structure? What can be done about it?"...etc etc
If one is truly interested in changing the world and not be engaged with ideologies as a "hobby", they'll have to go down that rabbit hole sooner or later and find the answers to these questions. But most don't even ask these questions - pretending that it's all a matter of choosing whether this system or that system is better and what characteristics are better and debating endlessly on self-evident things. Yet this is nothing more than a waste of time because it has zero real life consequences.
Conclusion
One can be thinking or discussing about ideologies surrounding economy and politics all day long, but this won't be creating any change in the world unless the ideologies are applied and tested in some practical way. And even then, that change won't be at a fundamental level because one has to first understand the way the world operates, recognize the key aspects where change is needed, find the ways to effect change in these aspects and then focus there first. But this is very rarely done.
@alexgr
Political ideologies are useless as far as I am concerned. For example there are so many anarchists here in Steemit bitching about America but not joining anarchic Liberland or moving to some other remote place of the world.
Nobody trully belongs to any political system. This is actually what makes politics ridiculous.
I don't like the idea of belonging to a political system either. I tend to view it like "shops" which sell ideological packages. Ideological packages are sold to the "thought-client" only as a package. These packages have some good parts and some bad parts that you have to buy together. It's like drinking water with some drops of ...poison in it. But given that the alternative "package" might seem worse a lot of people will instead prefer the poisoned water. In a sense all products seem problematic so you opt for the least problematic...
You have to dissect the systems => find the good parts => synthesize them => reject the bad parts => ask yourself whether such a synthesized system can be realistically applied as a whole or as some working system within the existing system => if the answer is no try to understand why => determine if this is something "fixable" => if yes then find the area that needs work => work on that area, etc etc.
In any case politics and economics (as theories/ideologies) are far less significant in life compared to one's purpose. What we want to do is far more important than the tools. We can debate all day about hammers and nails, but it won't make us that wooden desk or chair. You have to put the tools to work to get what you want.
imagine the havoc that will spread if everybody votes for the same thing but still has a political buffet in mind.
oh wait. this is exactly what is happening today
"You have to dissect the systems => find the good parts => "
Indeed. Understanding the underlying memes is crucial, because they infect everything above it. Things have to be reduced to their basics so that they can be understood. Modern capitalism, for example, is a machine that funnels the greatest amount of wealth as rapidly as possible to existing wealth. That is its purpose, and that is its result. It has no obligation to the greater good of humanity, of the planet, or even long-term benefits of the few. It is like pouring fertilizer onto a field. You get lots of green up fast, but whether that translates into a good harvest (fruits rather than foliage) or depletes the soil is uncared about. Again - its like burning a house to keep warm in winter. Understanding the mechanics of these memes is hard work, and even when you work it out, few will believe you. I can tell people until the cows come home that the idea of a single transcendent God has consequences X Y and Z for humanity, but they will ignore it. All I can do is to root out the memes in my own mind and throw the results of my thinking out there for others to hear. Some will land on stony ground.... (to quote the bible :)
What we have a shortage of today is people understanding the dominant culture and understanding its cognitive underpinnings, let alone anyone dedicated to changing those underpinnings to improve life generally.
A better version can be found here http://www.thebookoflife.org/on-changing-world/
"It’s tempting to believe that people don’t do the right thing because they don’t have the right ideas. But in truth, we already have so many nice ideas at the back of our minds; the problem is, we don’t act on them, and we don’t do so because, at key moments, we lack reminders, motivation and encouragement."
The reason why people appear to act "stupidly" is because those with the power spend a good fraction of their wealth psychologically manipulating the masses. Just advertising alone comes to $1000 per person in America. That money is spent for a reason; now add in the funding of media channels by the wealthy, pushing the message that the wealthy create jobs and that fixing the environment is costly and destroys jobs, or that controlling pollution does the same. In short, follow the money. Remove that influence, and where do you think we would be?
One could argue that people were manipulated prior to the invention of the internet, tv, radio, even the printing press.
So, if you extend the introspection you have to go down to the level where you may need to ask "Why are we exploitable as humans? What are our psychological exploits? Can't we make lists of these exploits and teach humanity how to "patch them" so as to become immune from psychological manipulation?"
In a sense, it's not the money that buys ads. It's the "exploitable" nature of humans. If the ad can influence you then we have some serious problem right there that needs fixing / a strategy to fix this on a massive scale, involving all of humanity.
To some degree, one can immunize oneself. The problem is that neurological manipulation hijacks systems in our brain that have been honed by millions of years of evolution. For example, the desire to be accepted by one's peers. It is possible to develop a rank unconcern for the opinions of others, but it comes at a severe cost. But as long as you have that desire, you can be preyed on by people telling you that people won't like you - or you wont be similar to others - unless you do/buy XXX.
These triggers exist, whether we like them or not. It is how people willingly go to die in wars. The problem is that much money has been spent in understanding these triggers and in how to abuse them so that others can be controlled. So your argument is somewhat like saying "the amount of money spent on nuclear weapons is not the problem, the problem is that we need to be able to build bunkers that can withstand them".
True - there are some ways in which we can make ourselves more resistant - not watching TV, for example - as well as world travel (thoroughly recommended), CIA anti-brainwashing programs, occult practices, including Buddhist mind-training programs, and so on, NLP..
But the reality is that most people are highly susceptible to this, and it doesn't matter how much work you have done on yourself when the brainwashed masses come as a mob to your door, flaming torches and pitchforks at the ready, waiting to throw you into a concentration camp.
For a teenage girl whose parents cant afford the "in" clothing of the moment, the resulting social ostracism can fu* her mind up beyond belief, for life. If only she had learned to switch off her feelings about the opinions of others, eh?
(An example of psych research - http://www.ics.uci.edu/~tdebeauv/files/2011-WoWretention.pdf How to retain players in video games. One can also look at research in food about how adding sugar to foods can addict customers).
Personally I think it's pretty doable as both manipulation and awareness of manipulation techniques can be learned. But the establishment, obviously, doesn't have any interest in teaching people this kind of information.
For me it's like biological evolution. there are some pressures for and some against, and if they act for long enough, some small changes are made. Occasionally, there is a revolution. Not worldwide revolution, just a localised revolution, that probably causes changes outside the locality, but these don't last. Communism and Capitalism are both imperfect systems it seems, but we just keep on evolving. Maybe the underground forces can't be seen over a lifetime but over many generations.
The hindsight of seeing the timeline evolve over a longer period is definitely a plus.
I'm quite interested on how capitalism and communism will adjust ideologically as they are approaching their "end-of-life" date.
If Artificial Intelligence starts to dominate the workforce in the decades ahead, the capitalist model of worker=consumer starts to crumble because the worker=consumer no longer exists to recycle the money.
The socialist/communist model of worker=essential for the production of added value, also starts to crumble because the worker is now useless.
...it will be interesting to see how they evolve or what will come out of this.
Very good point. Actually, it will be interesting (to say the least) to see what happens, period, when the robots take over. Personally, I fear that we will all move towards police states, where the long described 'Big Brother' scenario ensues. Hope I'm wrong. Perhaps the main, opposing forces will be freedom and oppression, so we'll have libertarianisms springing up all over the world?
Oooor, they can spin it as "safety" vs "danger" to suppress freedom - as they've been doing for the last 15 years... so if you are against "safety", you may be a ...terrorist.
I bookmarked this post. Wow, you are really right! This is why it seems that nothing ever changes...... because people who complain don't help things to change either. We have to rearrange the way we do things of we want change. Very deep and a very cool post!!!