We have all been there: drunk on ideology, wasted on words, belligerent on beliefs. It’s hard to shake a belief once it is deeply ingrained in the very fabric of your biology. This is what often gives ideas power, especially bad ideas. No idea is inherently dangerous; it is this capacity to intoxicate us beyond any sort of reason or critical thinking that is truly worrisome.
There are infinite ideas out there, of which some are good, and some are bad. We have ideas all day long: I should probably go drink water; I should try using this algorithm here; what if chatGPT just wrote this essay for me; what if I shouted as loud as I could in this lecture and then promptly left? It’s clear that some of these ideas are better than others, but by themselves, none of them have any sort of power. These ideas aren’t advantageous or dangerous. What makes them dangerous is their ability to intoxicate you.
An easy example of an intoxicating idea is any sort of religion. I was deeply Catholic until I was about 16 years old. The way my church was set up allowed them to weaponize my guilt to keep me trapped there, feeling bad for myself and begging for forgiveness. There’s this idea in many faiths that reading any kind of anti-religion sentiment is the work of the devil, so you end up remaining trapped in your microcosm of faith for a long time. This, combined with the emotional trauma from a sexually repressed childhood, makes Catholicism intoxicating. It’s hard to see anything clearly when you’re so deep in the faith. Even almost a decade after I quit the church, the beliefs and sexual repression still have me hungover. The Bible itself is quite benign, but it was my inability to think critically about the church and have empathy for myself and others that was dangerous.
It is also possible to be intoxicated by good ideas. For example, I am passionate about exercise and making music. There isn’t much critical thinking going on when I’m deeply emersed in a jam session or a lifting session, but that doesn’t matter because these are things that I believe are good for me (although, I also thought the church was good for me while I was a part of it, so maybe that alone isn’t enough). But the important thing to realize is that intoxication makes bad ideas dangerous but makes good ideas fun and fulfilling.
How does this apply to the concepts spoken about in class? Consider the idea of inequality being a natural part of human civilization. In moderation, this idea is not very dangerous. Yeah, my body, mind, preferences, and beliefs are different than yours, and that’s what makes us unique and important. But when you are intoxicated by this ideal of inequality and feel the need to make it a central part of your life, work, and government, now this idea is dangerous. Nothing in life is ever as black and white as we would like to think it is. Life is nuanced, and when you become intoxicated by a belief, it is difficult to address this nuance appropriately. This is why we have capitalists who believe that a completely free market with ultra-billionaires and heinous poverty levels is ideal.
Another example from class is the artificial creation of allies (and thus also enemies) when appealing to national pride. We are taught to care so much more about atrocities committed against Americans than those same atrocities committed to humans elsewhere. National pride and companionship are good in moderation when it helps us create a better nation that serves everyone better; however, when intoxicated by patriotism, we seize to see non-Americans as people. This is why we have Pearl Harbor Day but no Hiroshima or Nagasaki Day, even though the number killed on Pearl Harbor Day was orders of magnitude less, and they were mostly military deaths. This is why we still remember 9/11 twenty-two years later, even though we commit much more egregious acts in other countries all the time.
What we must learn is that one of the most important things you can do is be critical of your own beliefs. If you criticize a belief as hard as you can and you still think it is worthy, then it was a good belief to have in the first place. If you do that and it falls apart, why would you have wanted a false belief in the first place? Humans are brainwashed and easily manipulated into believing anything from Santa Claus or God to the sovereignty of certain races, which is why we must try to awaken from our dogmatic slumber in order to engage in fruitful debates for everyone involved. Every so often, we must have the humility and courage to sober up enough that we can ensure the ideas we are drunk on are good ones.