These are very good parameters for encouraging positive discourse. and averting dull discussion that descends into a game of Top-Trumps - I play my ideological

These are very good parameters for encouraging positive discourse. and averting dull discussion that descends into a game of Top-Trumps - I play my ideological card, you play your idealogical card... ad nauseum. I'm not sure whether predictable, emotional and polar qualities are necessarily intrinsic to "ideologies" in the broad sense. Novel, calmly reasoned and nuanced commentary could be offered in support of positions so labelled. But I get your drift on "touchy topics that people are prone fly off the handle over". FWIW I think this has more to do with stated identity than abstract modes of thought these days. As a moderator I guess one gets a sense of the dynamics of a thread and when it's going to tip in a bad direction. As I see it, we've come through, and remain in, an interregnum for perhaps 50 years, in which the word has become dirtied by the failures of political and religious practices. And also by incessant and needy "wars" on <the next terrible thing>. A thematic analysis of news from the past 20 years would surely place "ideology" in close proximity to words like "radicalised" or "extremist". That is parochial. As a sceptic I'm possessed of a meta-ideology - that ideologies in themselves are healthy. We can have ideologies like economics, belief in space-faring exploration, benevolent technological society, self-determination in health and preventative medicine, and other powerful ideas which, in this forum, would be inarguably deemed positive. Perhaps, unless we propose abandoning thought as a way of being (in a Buddhist sense) ideology is just the inescapable waters in which we swim. I guess what bugs me is if people use "ideology" as a bare, dismissive accusation that attempts to cut-off further dialogue. If everything and anything, including scientific method, can be an "ideology" it ultimately adds nothing to the conversation. respects