Teachers, like everyone else, are on a bell-curve of competency. Wouldn’t it be great to have kids learning interactively, rather than being lectured to by a teacher who may be great, or may be average,m or may be poor.

We need the teachers to provide one-on-one or small group inspiration and direction. But the vast majority of the transfer of information can be better done through interactive, pop-up quiz, multimedia single-source hi-tech delivery.

Then we might be talking about offering a first calss education to all.

Your link didn’t come through. I’d really like to read further on your ideas.

Yes, I’m obviously using the word “ideology” a little differently than you are, but I don’t think it’s much different. Yes, ideology is a set of ideas, pretty much the same as philosophy. But I think the term is also commonly used to mean a set of ideas that one is defensive about, that one has one’s “face” attached to. Politics provides many examples. Political partisans do not discuss things dispassionately, usually (there can be exceptions). People generally do not discuss the tenets of their religion dispassionately, usually (again there can be exceptions). You can conclude that a person has his “face” attached to his beliefs by the defensiveness shown when his beliefs are attacked, even when that attack was not intended. People rationalize at the drop of a hat. To avoid this defensiveness we often observe the simple rule never to talk about politics and religion.

When I say that humans are the ideological animal, I am referring to the tendency to easily attach our face to lots of things, including, perhaps primarily, groups and belief systems. When this happens then a perceived attack on one’s group or belief is treated as an attack on one’s self, or at least one’s face. It’s an insult, and elicits a hostile response, or at least a defensive response, including whatever rationalization seems to work at the moment. From my perspective this tendency has an instinctual base because it provided some degree of survival value in primitive society.

In a math classroom ideas are pretty well neutral. No one has their “face attached” to an erroneous version of the quadratic formula. But in much of the world we must tiptoe around trying not to offend. We have to be “politically correct” at all times. That’s not all bad, of course. It’s part of the price we pay for being civilized. A biology classroom ought to be as neutral as a math classroom, one might think. But some people have their face attached to a rejection of Darwinian evolution.

I don’t think I am completely alone in using “ideology” in this non-neutral sense. When we say a person is an “ideologue” isn’t this the sense of “ideology” that we have in mind? So when I suggest that ideology can be unhealthy, I am thinking of the ideologue who is so blinded by his defensiveness that he becomes totally incapable of thinking and acting rationally in some situations.

Remember the pictures from Little Rock in 1957, white faces contorted with rage at the sight of black school children heading toward the school house doors? One might say that is not ideology, but I think the term applies. “Tribalism” might be another term. Or what would be the best term? One might say that those rage-contorted faces are not of philosophers, but they do have a belief system, a “philosophy” if you will. And they have their face attached to that belief system.

I probably haven’t succeeded very well in giving a very good explanation of how I am using the term “ideology”. I think it is an incredibly important social phenomenon. It is ubiquitous in human life. It causes no end of misery and strife. One might say it also is a basis of much that is good in human life, a basis of human relationships. I don’t know. I think we have a lot to learn. Our present issue is semantic, I think, the definition of “ideology” and “ideological”. But by whatever terms we use there’s a lot of study and analyze. Those contorted faces from Little Rock do not make a better world.

Concerning Democrats and Republicans, I have long observed that each party has an authoritarian streak and a libertarian streak. I consider myself a libertarian, but I have always taken it for granted that we do need government, that government has a legitimate claim to have a monopoly on coercion, and therefore rule by the majority is inevitable. It has its faults and limitations, of course, but remains the best of all alternatives, I think. I’ll stick with my humble opinion that one party is a little more “knee jerk” than the other, that there are more “true believers” in that party, that it is the party of wishful thinking and good intentions more than the other party. But I’ll tiptoe around these opinions in most situations.

I have expanded my thoughts along these lines in an article on my website. Here’s a link,

On the point about the parties, it seems to me that how different the parties look has to do with perspective. If you’re within the broad tradition of the two, the points where they disagree seem huge. But if you reject their entire reasoning about government (i.e. if you believe that government has no right to use force to dictate to individuals to achieve either social or economic goals), then their differences between fairly trivial. Both parties believe government has to right to shape society the way it sees fit, forcing individuals to conform to things whether they want to or not. Over the last 30 years, the Republican Party has tried to force its social views on society, but has been a bit more tolerant (in comparison to the Democrats) on economics. The Democratic Party has tried to force its economic views on society, but has been a bit more tolerant on social policy (or at least had a different emphasis). So they’re both all about using the blunt instrument of government to force society to conform to their desires; they just have different things they emphasize and different things they’re a bit more tolerant about. But for those of us who reject the application of government powers in those areas, we see them both as equally guilty of claiming ownership of the individual which is immoral and misguided.

If you get right down to it, the problem is inherent to democracy. Anytime you allow majorities to control the rest of the population, you get things that become ugly. This country was never intended to be a democracy. It was intended to be a republic in which people had individual rights. (The Founders actually had quite nasty things to say about the concept of democracy.) The notion of “majority rule” is completely at odds with individual rights, which is why it’s such a shame the the Constitution has been perverted to mean whatever the majority want it to mean today.

I don’t believe any of this CAN change through the political process. In fact, I think it’s going to get much worse before it gets better. And I believe that it’s going to lead to economic and social collapse which will be ugly and bloody. I hope I’m wrong, but I can’t see how it can change any other way and I also don’t see how the present system’s pressures can be contained forever.

In pretend play a gross approximation to an action is just as good as a highly accurate and disciplined action. To pretend to be a tennis player a child needs only make a few movements with his arms, and in his pretend world he is a world class player. Is politics, for many people, just a form of pretend play? Pretend play is a regular part of childhood, and so far as I know, considered a healthy part of growing up. But can we say the same thing for pretend play in grown ups?

We know that humans are ideological animals, but doesn’t our ideology become unhealthy at times. I have long assumed that there is a strong evolutionary basis to ideology acting in us. It seems reasonable to assume that through perhaps a million years of stone age existence, our ideological tendencies would have survival value. We support and defend the ingroup and hate and attack the outgroup. That makes our ingroup better for us, and it doesn’t matter about the outgroup. But the survival value of ideology in stone age living might not be so good in modern living. What should we do about it? I don’t know, but I think it deserves some thought.

I pretty much agree with David McElroy’s comments on politics, except for one thing. I think there is a bit of difference between the two major parties. I agree they share the same faults to quite an extent, but I personally think one party is a bit less shallow and shortsighted than the other. I also think this party is less ideological than the other. But that’s just my humble opinion.