The End of Ideology: Life Without Labels

How do you feel when you argue politics at dinner? Do you dare broach ideological differences with friends or family? Have you experienced anger or anxiety after such discussions?

Even if political debates do not result in full-blown arguments or airborne spaghetti, they just don’t feel very good. There’s a reason why arguing politics at dinner is generally not considered good etiquette.

Perhaps you have learned to avoid politics and debate altogether, especially if previous altercations resulted in screaming matches. And since human beings have wildly different political opinions and beliefs, that’s always a risk.

Still, we yearn to share ideas.

There is value in conveying solutions to problems and trying to change the world. But do we want to spend our precious time arguing—especially if it causes a rift in our relationships?

Many of the arguments we engage in are the typical left-versus-right (blue-versus-red) type of disputes. In the United States, the divides caused by political stances have reached a fever pitch.

Aside from damaging relationships, left-right arguments may be declining in relevance due to recent technological and sociological shifts. Political debate ends up being a bottomless rabbit hole for a very simple reason: everyone has different views, and that will never stop being true. The result is an infinite game of argument-counterargument, raising cortisol levels while leading nowhere.

Is there a solution to this problem? Can we escape the impulse to engage in such destructive encounters? Perhaps there is. In fact, there may be a way to render these kinds of debates entirely unnecessary. It is a concept called panarchy.

Panarchy is the meta-political, non-normative philosophy that holds that people should be able to join whatever communities they want and agree to contractual relationships they deem worthwhile. Panarchy does not prescribe a normative view of the world or seek to impose a particular design. Instead, it recognizes that we are a cosmopolitan, value-heterogenous species. Everyone is unique, and we should be free to seek communities and groups that appeal to us individually.

The panarchist sees arguments over political affiliation as a normativity trap. This trap is akin to a mental cage that constrains a person to a particular moral worldview. People get ensnared by these philosophical mirages and fail to live harmoniously with others. In this view, political debate is an illusion—a consequence of statist indoctrination and addiction to ideology.
The way we view authority is based on our respective ideologies, personal histories, or preconceptions. However, if we can choose the kind of community and system we prefer, there is no need for arguments about who is being forced to do what by any authority. If we can sign contracts that allow us to experiment with our own social designs, the desire to argue suffocates. Addiction to ideology fades.

Why argue if we have choices or can test our political or ethical hypotheses? Arguing presupposes that we must all be forced to live a certain way—that we must universally accept one position as absolute truth and reject the other. (In reality, a kernel of truth likely exists in each.) In panarchy, we can prove which parts are most valid by running experiments on society and its structures.

We argue because we have lived under monopolies of thought and normativity traps for too long. Most of us grow up with predefined templates for politics and ideology. Only a handful of accepted political positions exist, so we must choose one and win a political contest to see it implemented.

This mindset is galvanized by the notion that we should defend our sacred cows to death. It represents what psychologist Charles Tart called the consensus trance: the belief that adopting consensus views is essential for social and psychological harmony.

Can we escape the consensus trance and understand that our philosophies can coexist? Yes. Instead of arguing, we engage with communities that share our values. We exit and build. We experiment with governance models and demonstrate their real-time efficacy.

In his article “From Versailles to Cybernetics,” anthropologist Gregory Bateson says that human societies often fall into a pattern of escalating political opposition, of action and reaction—a process he calls schismogenesis. The term describes the tendency of social groups to define themselves in opposition to one another, reinforcing differences rather than seeking common ground. In this way, the schismogenic process is a self-replicating social drama.

The concept applies directly to political divisions. The more each side argues for a worldview, the more entrenched they become, feeding into a cycle of ideological conflict that never reaches a resolution. Essentially, schismogenesis destroys relationships by causing generations-long arguing and fighting, even if newer generations do not know the original source of the dispute. This is known as a feedback loop. Here is Bateson:

“I submit to you that what is wrong with the international field is that the rules need changing. The question is not what is the best thing to do within the rules as they are at the moment. The question is how can we get away from the rules within which we have been operating for the last ten or twenty years, or since the Treaty of Versailles.”

In Bateson’s example above, the “rules” embedded in the Treaty of Versailles—and the international political system—catapulted Germany into a schismogenic feedback loop of escalating tensions that resulted in total war. The “war guilt” clause and the crippling reparations of the treaty generated feelings of hatred, resentment, and rage.

This insult to German pride created the necessary and sufficient conditions for the emergence of an attack-counterattack dynamic, ultimately leading to Hitler, World War II, the Holocaust, the invention and detonation of nuclear weapons, and millions dead. Long before violence erupts, miscommunication, argumentation, and escalation politics have already set the stage.

Similar processes and patterns occur daily throughout modern life—in our politics, our culture, and our psychology. Continuous arguing without resolution ends in anger and bitterness—a loop of frustrated attack and counterattack that intensifies, unless combatants find a way to resolve their communication malfunctions.

This astute insight, which Bateson brought to the world, has largely been ignored or forgotten. It is time to reconsider it, alongside panarchy, as we search for solutions.

Imagine if we, as a species, found solutions to our political differences and escaped schismogenesis. Might we be able to end our addiction to ideology and resolve our most vexing social and cultural dilemmas?

Adopting panarchy is a potential starting point because it provides fertile ground for experimentation without judgment. It allows us to hone our collective intelligence, sensemaking tools, and coordination efforts. The more these approaches are used, the more harmoniously we can live alongside neighbors and cultures that fundamentally disagree on some value or preference.

Winner-take-all systems raise the stakes of politics, turning the world into a zero-sum ideological battleground and poisoning the well of reasoned discourse. Ideologies and totalizing moral and political systems lead to radicalization, producing schismogenic patterns of social and cultural blindness. Communication only occurs when all parties are listening, and the only way to reach that state is to lower the stakes of politics.

By allowing people to go their own way, panarchy may help solve these problems. It unlocks new ways of seeing. Once I grasped the concept, I realized the hollow and vampiric nature of political debate. I had wasted so much energy and glucose defending my cherished ideology. Once I finally stopped engaging outright, the idea of politics died forever for me. I hope to see this same epiphany emerging collectively, at scale, in the near future.