Politics is an aspect of life in common that, despite affecting all of us in our lives, seems to be widely repudiated. The linking of the political sphere to the exercise of elites who are in charge of synthesizing the chaotic “popular will” through a kind of electoral alchemy is something that, at the very least, generates disdain for its ineffectiveness when it comes to introducing satisfactory changes for the entire population in the economic and social spheres.
However, there are still few people who question classic participatory democracy, adhering to the logic of the lesser evil. This is, apparently, a position of the centers, which does not fall into extremism. One might wonder, however, what is the psychological nature of the political center, and to what extent it is differentiated from alternative ways of thinking. To do this, we would first have to address the concept of ideology.
Classically it has been understood ideology as a system of fundamental ideas that define a political, religious, cultural, identity-based way of thinking, etc. characteristic of a person or community. That is to say, in a certain way the emphasis is placed on the timeless and the degree to which these ideas define and are defined by the person or group that holds them.
From the point of view of cognition It is very comfortable to understand the concept of ideology as something immutable Watertight and fixed categories do not lead to contradiction, they promote conservative ways of thinking: being an anarchist means not going to vote in general elections, being right-wing means defending labor flexibility. “I don’t vote because I’m an anarchist, I’m an anarchist because I don’t vote. This is practically tautological reasoning with the internal gears perfectly greased.
Without a doubt, believing in a priori fixed ideologies is comfortable However, this belief has the problem of being totally unrealistic. Thinking that people have concepts, category systems and “thought circuits” fixed in time or even “own to our being” is a form of dualism that goes against everything we know about psychology and neuroscience. Today we know that any idea is actually the result of a network of neural relationships in continuous change, even during old age. There are no fixed ways of seeing reality, and therefore there are even fewer ways of thinking “own of…” if we take into account that these are constantly changing.
Likewise, the definitions of political ideologies found in academic literature do not exist apart from a reader who will internalize these ideas in the light of their past and present experiences and who will also guide their conclusions according to their objectives and interests.
Between ideas, prejudices and wills
Any idea exists because certain associations between lower-ranking ideas and perceptions silence other possible associations of ideas. What happens is that associations of ideas occur within a process of competition and convergence of various fragments of knowledge, biological impulses, subjective evaluations and conclusions of deliberate thought, as Joaquín M. Fuster points out in Cerebro y Libertad (2014 ). This happens continually, even while we sleep. As a consequence, our Thought is not rigidly guided by a single integrating principle such as “being right-wing” or “being pacifist,” etc
The term “ideology” refers only to those general guidelines that define ways of thinking, but at the same time it implies an inevitable reductionism when studying something, comparing it with other things, etc. It is useful to talk about ideologies, but we must keep in mind that what occurs in reality is something else: unique and unrepeatable thoughts, deeply original even though they are based on experiences, memories and previous knowledge, guided only in part by deliberate thinking.
This conclusion has serious implications Consciously renouncing our ability to reduce politics to hermetic and autonomous philosophical systems proposed “from above” implies thinking of politics as a function that is not typical of central decision-making bodies. It implies, at the end of the day, saying goodbye to ideological monism, to textbook politics.
