For discussion: An issue involving two current problems.
A paper on the “sociopathy of ideologies” by Dr. Hans Grunicke [1] raises a question whether ideologies can be seen as contagious ‘illnesses’, especially with regard to the way they spread and react to prevention and ‘treatment’. If so, the comparison might reveal helpful suggestions about more effective ways of responding to either one.
There are important issues about such comparisons that need clarification. For example, there is more common consensus about the state of affairs we call ‘health’ and ‘life’ that is being threatened by a virus, and that it should be resisted and ‘defeated’, than about competing ideologies that each see themselves as the ‘healthy’ state and the other as the ‘unhealthy’ and potentially ‘toxic’ threat. So the definitions of health or ‘soundness’ and unhealthy, toxic features of ideologies will be obvious controversies.
Two first tentative ‘maps’ of the forces and effects involved may help to start the examination of this idea. The ‘epidemic’ map tries to show interventions of societies to maintain or restore ‘health’ and the productive or counterproductive ‘loops in that system, with ‘society’s main intervention agents as ‘government’ and ‘media’. In the ‘ideology’ map the part of ‘health-defending’ party is simply shown as the ‘dominant’ ideology responding to the effort of one ‘alternative’ ideology to become dominant.
Some first observations concern the role of ‘positive’ and ‘negative’ loops or circular forces. The ‘ideology’ map shows a clear patterns of escalating actions and countermeasures that can be seen as a toxic vicious cycle or spiral towards violent confrontation (‘war’) where one ‘ideology’ will remain or win dominance over the other. Each action can be seen as leading to escalation, even when intended as a means of forcing the sequence back onto a ‘lower’ level of confrontation in the system.
The ‘pandemic’ map does not show one clear overall ‘escalation’ loop. Of course there also is escalation, determined by success or failure of prevention and treatment interventions over time. But an equally important role is played by several potentially positive or negative feedback loops, that affect society’s compliance with the needed or recommended efforts: Government measures that prove ineffective to combat the pandemic, plausibly reduce public confidence in those measures, and thus reduce the public’s compliance with those measures, just as their visible effectiveness would increase confidence. But that same confidence that “the pandemic is under control” also can reduce the compliance, inducing a false sense of reduced risk. The effects of government and media communication to the public will further complicate these effects. (The media role in the ‘ideology’ system should be added to the map and investigation.)
The maps show that there are many possible ‘intervention’ points in each network (numbered for further detailed discussion) of each item. Is this contrary to the impression in the general discussion that covers only a few contested issues? Should public discussion in both domains be more concerned with comprehensive strategies consisting of several ‘treatment’ possibilities at the many intervention points?
[1] Dr. Hans Hermann Grunicke: “Zur Soziopathie von Ideologien”: (unpubl. draft 2020), private communication.
Abbe Boulah's Weblog 