Curses of Culture: Total system ideologies

Total system ideologies TSIs) are those which purport to include and explain everything. Such ideologies include both religious and political thought systems. All TSIs, religious or political, include false assumptions, misinterpreted facts, false reasoning and sheerly convenient mythology. That being the case, all TSIs are deeply flawed, and not productive guides to human thought and/or action.
But, always among us are those with compromised personalities who feel the need for absolute truth and absolute certainty so greatly that they would "sell their souls" to obtain it. They gravitate toward TSI as they appear to provide the needed certainty. In addition, by becoming totally committed true believers, they also gain sense of community and power by becoming part of a large group..
By committing themselves to become fully and dogmatically committed true believers those people lose their objectivity and all ability to exercise critical judgment. he most fervent true believers usually become the leaders of the TSI, spreading the dogma, threatening to withhold the benefits and promised rewards promised to adherents, and threatening the severest of social and psychological punishments for those who dare to doubt. The TSIs offer the strongest of carrots and sticks and use these to control people.
This is true of political TSIs, as well. Communist ideology offers a promised communist utopia which is said to be inevitable -- after a period in which a group of ideologically elite true believers rule in a dictatorship to drive out all doubts and different ways of thinking Like religions Communism is a totally flawed TSI.
In 1972, French journalist Jean Jacques Revel wrote WITHOUT MARX OR jESUS, describing how people in Europe and the USA are beginning to realize that they don't need the TSIs to find or create meaning in their lives. I see movement in that direction -- more in Europe than in the USA.