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The mid to late 20th Century was largely about the contest of ideologies. While there may not have been as much mass bloodshed, it was no more peaceful. Proxy
by lmickh 14y ago
The mid to late 20th Century was largely about the contest of ideologies. While there may not have been as much mass bloodshed, it was no more peaceful. Proxy wars were fought across pretty much the entire globe. Other conflicts also erupted in areas that were not defined by the Cold War, but their own local Ideological differences.
I think some of this talk about ideologies is throwing the baby out with the bath water. Abstracting your worldview so that you can better explain yourself to others should not be looked down upon. That is how you will ultimately come to better compromise when it possible. You can't solve problems without ideas.
Ideologies are harmful when you take some text some Russian wrote years ago and try to bend the world to match that text. When you define your own worldview and don't rely only on the words of a dead guy that isn't there to clarify things, then you get into trouble.
- jeremyjh 14y agoNo, it is a very serious problem when your Ideology can provide a single correct answer to every single problem, regardless of the actual facts related to that problem.
- lmickh 14y agoI'm pretty sure that matches my statement about bending the world to match your Ideology. Odd that you would disagree when saying the same thing...
- EthanHeilman 14y agoThe scale and ambitions of wars today are much smaller which is in essence what you are saying and it is a really important point. We are living in a time of extremely limited war that in comparison with the mid 20th Century is a time of relative peace (the mid 20th Century being one of the most bloody in human history). This graph makes this point better than I: http://users.erols.com/mwhite28/war-1900.htm http://users.erols.com/mwhite28/war-1900.htm >think some of this talk about ideologies is throwing the baby out with the bath water. Abstracting your worldview so that you can better explain yourself to others should not be looked down upon. Agreed, and for the record I'm not against ideology or story telling in general. It is what humans do to make sense of their role in the world. It is interesting to me that we live in a time of old dying ideologies and it skews our perspective about the future since long term these treads have never lasted. For example the The_End_of_History(tm) claim that was getting some traction in the 1990s. What will come next?
- lmickh 14y agoYes, the scale of wars has not been on the multinational "total war" level the last half century, but it is hardly been peaceful. Just more along historical norms pre-World Wars. That is normally true of wars following more encompassing conflicts. Ideology played just as large of a driving force during the second half of the 20th Century yet the bloodshed was less. It is hard to say that withdraw from Ideology equals greater peace.