When I was teenager, and I
first noticed that there was something deeply and
systematically wrong with our society, I found myself
shopping around for solutions. Being from a working class
family, I accepted socialism as my personal savior. I went
to meetings, read treatises, and preached against
capitalism to anyone who would listen. But it didn’t
take me long to realize that I’d bought into a
prefabricated system of thought that had as much hostility
toward independent thinking as any other religion.
Disillusioned, I went back to speaking my own words
instead of the words I’d pulled from pamphlets and
slogans.
Since then I’ve come to realize that ideology itself
IS the problem. It’s a disease. It doesn’t matter
which strain you’ve contracted—communism, feminism,
Alcoholics Anonymous, Christianity, Amway, Scientology,
neo-conservatism—they all work the same way. These
belief systems take on a life of their own, but, like
viruses, they aren’t really alive so they require a
living host who then spreads the disease. Just as a virus
attacks when the immune system is weak, ideology attacks
when self-esteem is low. It provides the weak-minded with
an in-group, an historical cosmology, and—most
importantly—an evil enemy who deserves to be punished.
Liberals, Jews, the patriarchy, take your pick; they’re
interchangeable in that they all serve as straw men that
allow the adherents to feel superior as they release their
pent-up anger and resentment.
Once the infection is complete, the system of thought
becomes a symbiote living in the brain of its victim. The
victim no longer needs to evaluate life as it happens
because all experience is filtered through the ideology.
It’s no longer important whether or not they enjoy what
they see or hear, only whether or not they approve of
those things based on criteria provided by their creed.
Eventually, their capacity for subjective experience
atrophies as it’s replaced by rigid dogma, leaving them
as one-dimensional as characters from the Sunday funnies.
In the worst cases, everything that doesn’t conform to
the party line is seen as a threat to be eliminated, and
all manner of atrocity is justified because the ideologue
is no longer dealing with real people, but is instead
dealing with elements in a story being fed to them by
their symbiote.
The symptoms are obvious: One minute you’re relating
to a human being, the next minute the mouthpiece for an
ideology is trying to sell you a revolution, or a guilt
trip, or Jesus, or an herbal energy drink. One minute
ideas are being exchanged, the next a robot is trying to
indoctrinate you with clichÈs and unsubstantiated
statistics. Even when you agree with their basic premise,
talking to an ideologue is about as fun and enlightening
as discussing philosophy with Jehovah’s Witnesses.
So let me try to say this without sounding
condescending: Kids, back when I was your age, I too spent
my time building an ideological fortress against the
world, but now I’m a clown, and clowns are the antidote
to this condition. We’re here to subvert all dogma. We’re
the Uncertainty Principle that will smash holes in all
your belief systems.
Give us any chance, we’ll take it. Give us any rule
we’ll break it. We’ll infiltrate the public mind like
brown acid, melting your preconceived notions and leaving
you naked in the sun. When our revolution comes, rest
assured, if your identity is defined by any variant of the
suffix “-ist,” we’ll round you up in death camps
where we can get rid of your kind once and for all.
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