• Log InLog In
  • Register
Liquid`
Team Liquid Liquipedia
EDT 19:59
CEST 01:59
KST 08:59
  • Home
  • Forum
  • Calendar
  • Streams
  • Liquipedia
  • Features
  • Store
  • EPT
  • TL+
  • StarCraft 2
  • Brood War
  • Smash
  • Heroes
  • Counter-Strike
  • Overwatch
  • Liquibet
  • Fantasy StarCraft
  • TLPD
  • StarCraft 2
  • Brood War
  • Blogs
Forum Sidebar
Events/Features
News
Featured News
Code S RO8 Preview: herO, Zoun, Bunny, Classic3Code S RO8 Preview: Rogue, GuMiho, Solar, Maru3BGE Stara Zagora 2025: Info & Preview27Code S RO12 Preview: GuMiho, Bunny, SHIN, ByuN3The Memories We Share - Facing the Final(?) GSL47
Community News
BGE Stara Zagora 2025 - Replay Pack2Weekly Cups (June 2-8): herO doubles down1[BSL20] ProLeague: Bracket Stage & Dates9GSL Ro4 and Finals moved to Sunday June 15th13Weekly Cups (May 27-June 1): ByuN goes back-to-back0
StarCraft 2
General
Code S RO8 Preview: herO, Zoun, Bunny, Classic Jim claims he and Firefly were involved in match-fixing The SCII GOAT: A statistical Evaluation DreamHack Dallas 2025 - Official Replay Pack BGE Stara Zagora 2025 - Replay Pack
Tourneys
[GSL 2025] Code S:Season 2 - RO8 - Group A RSL: Revival, a new crowdfunded tournament series SOOPer7s Showmatches 2025 Sparkling Tuna Cup - Weekly Open Tournament Sea Duckling Open (Global, Bronze-Diamond)
Strategy
[G] Darkgrid Layout Simple Questions Simple Answers [G] PvT Cheese: 13 Gate Proxy Robo
Custom Maps
[UMS] Zillion Zerglings
External Content
Mutation # 477 Slow and Steady Mutation # 476 Charnel House Mutation # 475 Hard Target Mutation # 474 Futile Resistance
Brood War
General
BGH auto balance -> http://bghmmr.eu/ BW General Discussion FlaSh Witnesses SCV Pull Off the Impossible vs Shu StarCraft & BroodWar Campaign Speedrun Quest Will foreigners ever be able to challenge Koreans?
Tourneys
[ASL19] Grand Finals [BSL20] GosuLeague RO16 - Tue & Wed 20:00+CET NA Team League 6/8/2025 [Megathread] Daily Proleagues
Strategy
I am doing this better than progamers do. [G] How to get started on ladder as a new Z player
Other Games
General Games
Stormgate/Frost Giant Megathread Nintendo Switch Thread Beyond All Reason Path of Exile What do you want from future RTS games?
Dota 2
Official 'what is Dota anymore' discussion
League of Legends
Wizard Hilton Cybertech Crypto Recovery: Proven Re
Heroes of the Storm
Simple Questions, Simple Answers Heroes of the Storm 2.0
Hearthstone
Heroes of StarCraft mini-set
TL Mafia
TL Mafia Community Thread Vanilla Mini Mafia
Community
General
Things Aren’t Peaceful in Palestine US Politics Mega-thread UK Politics Mega-thread Russo-Ukrainian War Thread Vape Nation Thread
Fan Clubs
Maru Fan Club Serral Fan Club
Media & Entertainment
Korean Music Discussion [Manga] One Piece
Sports
2024 - 2025 Football Thread Formula 1 Discussion NHL Playoffs 2024
World Cup 2022
Tech Support
Computer Build, Upgrade & Buying Resource Thread
TL Community
The Automated Ban List
Blogs
A Better Routine For Progame…
TrAiDoS
StarCraft improvement
iopq
Heero Yuy & the Tax…
KrillinFromwales
I was completely wrong ab…
jameswatts
Need Your Help/Advice
Glider
Trip to the Zoo
micronesia
Customize Sidebar...

Website Feedback

Closed Threads



Active: 26575 users

Use and Abuse of Prejudice and Ideology

Blogs > Jerubaal
Post a Reply
Jerubaal
Profile Blog Joined June 2010
United States7684 Posts
October 07 2016 05:42 GMT
#1
I’d like to discuss some common sources of knowledge and how people accept, synthesize, filter and organize this knowledge.This essay is meant to examine some concepts partially because they are worth thinking about but also as a springboard for further discussion using shared definitions. I was motivated to put this together because I wanted to add to some discussions but found that it would be difficult to do so (or at least would be a lot less clear and convincing) without a lot of backstory. So this is my attempt to remedy this.
Any criticism, comments or suggestions with regard to the prose or content are welcome. Putting out these sorts of content can be a little scary. How do you discuss complex ideas without sounding pedantic? How do you cover all of your bases without sounding facile? I’ve seen many writers put themselves out there here on TL, with varying degrees of success. Reading them has given me a little bit of courage. I have a pretty sparse writing style, so if you think I am making assumptions or have an odd view on something, it might just be that I failed to unpack it enough. Please also do not be too concerned with the few definitions I try to make, although if you have a better name for them, suggest away!

The lowest way of obtaining knowledge is by prejudice. By prejudice I mean attitudes acquired by some authority or personal experience. These are usually pretty simplistic propositions. “Do this, don’t do this.” Something is good, something is bad. I do not mean prejudice in a pejorative way; prejudice can be very useful. Especially in our early years, prejudice keeps us safe before we can use our rational faculties. “Don’t cross the road without an adult. Don’t touch the stove or a strange animal.” Prejudice also allows for early habits to be imprinted before we really understand their significance. There would be no child math, chess, piano or gymnastic prodigies if the children were left to their own devices. Rather an adult supplied the direction and the dedication for the child until the child becomes engrossed in the activity. I have to imagine that I, for one, would have read a lot less if I had not been given read to, given books and continually dragged to libraries during my early years. You could argue that a child’s whole formation is driven by prejudice. Whether a child grows up to be a polite, moral, productive citizen is largely dependent on these early prejudices and, lacking them, rationality is often useless. It is a strange fact that your habits in your formative years are largely affected by doing things you do not fully understand the significance of. You’re told to eat your vegetables and do your homework, even though you don’t really understand why.
As you might expect, informing our views through prejudice has some downsides. Of course there could be correct prejudices and and incorrect prejudices. Surely it’s fine to have prejudices as long as they are the correct ones. It is only the incorrect prejudices we need to worry about. The problem with prejudice is that it has a strange resistance to reason. If you develop an aversion to broccoli or genetically modified food or a particular skin color early in life, it might stick permanently, no matter what arguments they come across. Prejudice often precludes the thought of thinking rationally on the subject at all. Sometimes that is the case and usually in all the wrong cases. Sometimes, though, prejudice is a thin defense against real dangers. Children are often rigorously admonished to avoid dangerous and immoral activities. What happens, though, when they encounter an equally strong social pressure or a plausible argument against those lessons? We have all known that person who had a fairly strong upbringing but fell off the wagon as soon as they were given freedom. What happens to the young adult, encountering vice for the first time, whose parents imparted a strict moral code but failed to encourage any reflection on those morals? What happens to a public virtue, long taken for granted, when it is subjected to powerful social pressures and rhetorical campaigns? Prejudice may be a strong first line of defense, but reason should always be behind it. Prejudice is dangerous because the well-intentioned can be harmed by it as much as the callous.

Moving up the food chain a bit in terms of sophistication is ideology. While prejudice often takes the form of isolated judgements or opinions (“I don’t like chocolate ice cream.” “Doing your homework is important.”), ideology offers explanations and solutions on a much larger scale. Ideology informs positions, but it also engenders action. As one of my university teachers described it, ideology is an idea with an action plan.
Communism/socialism is one of the more fleshed-out and certainly one of the more commonplace ideologies, so it will be a helpful example. Socialism begins with a few core beliefs: that the rich and powerful unfairly and unjustly hoard resources and that the poor and powerless needlessly suffer because of this. This belief begins as explanatory and descriptive as a theory for phenomena, the way things are in the world, but it quickly becomes an imperative, a call to action. The lower classes are oppressed? We must liberate them. The upper classes hoard wealth and power? We must humble them. This is not just an account, it is a roadmap.
Ideology is an essential part of politics because it is really where the rubber meets the road. Political theory is well and good, but you need an ideology in order to implement that theory in the world. Marx may have studied the history of philosophy and he may have some ideas as to where it’s going in the next thousand years, but his followers don’t need to know about that. What they need to do is pinch the sausage at both ends so they can sell it. In this way, ideology acts as a flashpoint in the stream of ideas. The downside to this is that myopia is quite common among the less intellectual ideologues. They are not aware of the trains of thought that led to their cause. Ask your average coffee house socialist about Hegel and history and they will likely give you a blank look. Yet Hegel’s theories of history are integral to understanding the spirit of socialism. This leads to unexamined assumptions. Do you believe that history flows in a single direction and we are marching towards an inevitable goal? Because that idea is informing your viewpoint if you are a socialist. Likewise, if you are unaware of this stream of thought, you do not really know where you are going.
As you can see, ideology may be effective at explaining certain phenomena but has a pretty narrow field of view. Probably the chief defect of this narrowness is, as explained in one of my favorite expressions, when all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail. When people use the term “ideologue” pejoratively, they are not describing the expression of a philosophical or sociological idea. They are talking about a particularly annoying person who seems to have an opinion on everything and seems to have the same response for everything:- a person whose response to an event or response you can predict before you even ask them. Seriously, though, Ideology-tinted glasses can determine your judgements before you see the evidence, or even regardless of the evidence. Remember our pal socialism? Well, according to socialism, the powerful are the oppressors and the less powerful are the oppressed. That means that, if there is a conflict, the more powerful party is in the wrong. Pretty much by default. Is there a dispute between the owner of a factory and his workers? The owner is wrong. No need for an appraisal of the facts. This can lead to some pretty absurd situations where a person considered the oppressor in one scenario is viewed as the oppressed in another. “Professional athletes are treated above the law!” “Those poor multimillionaire athletes are being oppressed by those billionaires!” What a reasonable person should do is consider the circumstances in every individual case, but when your whole worldview points in one direction, more often than not you will come to that conclusion. Worse, your ideology creates its own sort of prejudice (see how this works?) and you won’t even realize that you are leaping to these conclusions. You will simply filter out the evidence that does not support your forgone judgement.
According to our investigation, prejudice and ideology both have important roles to fill,but the drawback is that they are limited. If you could zoom in on one factor that makes these types of knowledge deficient, it is that they are too narrow in scope. They fail to see the big picture. A prohibition on eating molluscs makes a lot of sense if you live on the Red Sea. It makes less sense if you live on the coast of Maine. Likewise, a paradigm about worker’s rights might be swell when applied to occupational matters, but less swell when it’s applied to your entire life. So how can we avoid this pitfall? How can we achieve any real knowledge? I think you have probably already guessed the answer, which is that you have to consider everything. This may seem simultaneously impossible and vague, but our discussion should provide us some guidance.
First, we should not be content with merely accepting a premise, even if we know it is right. We should seek to understand why it is right. We should remember that our one question is not the entirety of the universe and we should not treat our one slice of pie as if it were the whole pie. We should be mindful that when we accept some notions temporarily, or because of their utility, that does not grant them validity. Otherwise, we will move further and further away from the truth, confusing our stepping stones for dry land. Finally, we should appreciate that the universe is wide and our eyes can only see so much at a time. We can take inspiration and knowledge from the various disciplines, but we should always be on the lookout to see how they connect and interlock and what greater truth unites them.


****
I'm not stupid, a marauder just shot my brain.
AKnopf
Profile Blog Joined March 2011
Germany259 Posts
October 07 2016 09:56 GMT
#2
Thanks, Jerubaal , for such a gentle approach to such controversial matters (especially on the internet!)
May your writing style be a model for all discussion to come. :-)

I especially liked your first paragraph about prejudice. When I read "What happens to a public virtue, long taken for granted, when it is subjected to powerful social pressures and rhetorical campaigns?" I immediately thought of the converse of refugees in germany (living in germany that comes only natural) and other developments that are concerning to me. So many people "of course" are open minded etc. but only because you are supposed to. As soon as someone comes along and tells you it's ok (and the easier solution) to hate others, they sigh in relieve and forget their previous prejudices. My concner is not only for the content of those developments but for the easy with which people adept to new and possibly dangerious ideas without even thinking about it.

But then again, not everyone is trained (or even willing) to think independently and deeply about their values. I once asked my grandma what she thinks the purpose of life is and she just looked at me in surprise. As it turned out the she never even thought about it in over 80 years and shrugged it off in the blink of an eye. Maybe it is a good thing we have prejudices and ideologies for all of us who neglect to have their own take on such matters? But then, do we not use those ideologies to opress all "dumb" people? No matter whether this is a good thing or not, I think it's important to reach a hand and to invite everyone to have a stake at this. (For example in writing this blog, Jerubaal). And who knows, maybe my grandma did stop to think for a while after my question?
The world - its a funny place
Daswollvieh
Profile Blog Joined October 2009
5553 Posts
October 07 2016 11:37 GMT
#3
While I appreciate the points you make I think they remain too abstract or "academic". I know plenty of people who are well educated and very well able to think critically in an academic context as they have learned it through decades of study and yet are caught up in prejudice and ideology all the same and they never realize it, because they are surrounded by people who share these beliefs/values/opinions/worldviews.

When it´s about people you always have to consider the emotional aspect. Ideas or knowledge or insights are not what drives people. Our brains are fundamentally still wired like your odd mammal´s. And that influences the decisions we make everyday more than all study of anything ever will. And that´s why you have to connect to people on an emotional level, not on an intellectual one (for relevant world-changing purposes). Prejudice and ideology fit you wiring ergonomically, because they speak to us on a simple emotional level. And that´s one reason why all great ideas have eventually "devolved" into ideology.

A considerate problem I encounter with many well-educated, meaning usually university degrees, friends and acquaintances is that they are prejudiced against the emotional side of, well, everything. We´ve learned in school that mind and body are apart and only few people get this view corrected in social studies/psychology, but even by that point they have been so primed by our school system that thinking > feeling and rationality > emotion that it becomes extremely uncomfortable for them to consider rationality = emotion because humans = mammals.

And at that point, most people, sadly, are not willing to confront their own educationally internalized prejudices. And it would mean that the great theories of the great thinkers of the past weren´t so great because they actually didn´t know enough about how people´s minds work.

Anyway, what I´m trying to say: Mere knowledge or insight does not make people, in general, happy. And you can only reach people by stuff that makes them feel good. And that´s not a matter of education. Education opens other ways of satisfaction, but it´s still about feeling good. Prejudice and ideology, to me, take information and charge them up emotionally, so they are virally successful while philosophy and other mind-centered disciplines never reach a large amount of people.
deth
Profile Blog Joined August 2009
Australia1757 Posts
October 07 2016 22:29 GMT
#4
Communism/socialism is more of a religion than an ideology.

Ideology stems from man-made ideals, but communism is based on the superhuman idea that all men are equal and equality should be universal.

It was an evolution of monotheism, and to this date is laughably hard to defend without resorting to arguments about souls or spirituality.
YokoKano
Profile Blog Joined July 2012
United States612 Posts
October 08 2016 01:20 GMT
#5
prejudice makes you who you are. ideology is circumspect / tangential. we cannot divorce the essence of man any more than we can wed the intellect to perturbation.
IQ 155.905638752
Jerubaal
Profile Blog Joined June 2010
United States7684 Posts
October 08 2016 03:57 GMT
#6
@AKnopf- One thing I have been thinking about lately is that it seems that many people's "positions" are much more fluid than you might think. You seem to suggest that the hatred is only being held back by a bridle of social mores, but it might just be that people can be easily changed. I think, though, that culture can help prevent such changes, though, especially with a high level of public discourse.

@AKnopf and @Daswollvieh, I agree that it's almost as never as simple as pure rationality. One of my main interests is exactly how people come to their positions and it's not about just comparing words in print. I do think, however, that many of these ideas come from the top. I don't think we're going to have a nation of citizen-philosophers anytime soon, but if the top has high standards, it can raise the standard of discourse for the society as a whole.

Really you're both making a lot of points that should be discussed. I just couldn't in this tiny space.



I'm not stupid, a marauder just shot my brain.
Jerubaal
Profile Blog Joined June 2010
United States7684 Posts
Last Edited: 2016-10-08 04:04:59
October 08 2016 04:03 GMT
#7
On October 08 2016 07:29 deth wrote:
Communism/socialism is more of a religion than an ideology.

Ideology stems from man-made ideals, but communism is based on the superhuman idea that all men are equal and equality should be universal.

It was an evolution of monotheism, and to this date is laughably hard to defend without resorting to arguments about souls or spirituality.


As amusing as it is to polemically compare Progressivism and its spawn to religion and Progressivism/Hegel certainly owe some part of their origin to Christianity(suggested reading: The Theological Origins of Modernity, Gillespie) (what a clusterfuck of a sentence), I have to point out that it isn't actually a religion. In fact, I'd say a major criticism of socialism is that it purports to be a religion when it is not. It takes a sphere of human activity, economics, and calls it the only relevant sphere.

I really don't want to get into a slog over Marxism. It just seemed like a good example that everyone could understand.
I'm not stupid, a marauder just shot my brain.
zulu_nation8
Profile Blog Joined May 2005
China26351 Posts
Last Edited: 2016-10-09 07:24:20
October 09 2016 07:23 GMT
#8
bro if you're learning by personal experience then it's not called prejudice
Jerubaal
Profile Blog Joined June 2010
United States7684 Posts
October 10 2016 16:18 GMT
#9
Sure it can be.

If I have a bad experience and that experience colors all of my subsequent experiences, then I have developed a prejudice.


I'm not stupid, a marauder just shot my brain.
zulu_nation8
Profile Blog Joined May 2005
China26351 Posts
October 10 2016 17:54 GMT
#10
words don't mean whatever you want them to mean
Jerubaal
Profile Blog Joined June 2010
United States7684 Posts
October 10 2016 18:37 GMT
#11
Are you getting hung up on the word prejudice? If you have a better suggestion for a non-intellectualized position not supported by rationality, then suggest away.
I'm not stupid, a marauder just shot my brain.
zulu_nation8
Profile Blog Joined May 2005
China26351 Posts
October 10 2016 19:25 GMT
#12
why would knowledge based from personal experience and authority be irrational
Jerubaal
Profile Blog Joined June 2010
United States7684 Posts
October 10 2016 19:52 GMT
#13
The sensible use of experience is to understand its limitations. If I take my limited experience and apply it to a larger range than I should, even when I'm presented with conflicting information, I'm using an irrational prejudice.

An argument from authority is inherently irrational- or maybe a-rational would be better. That doesn't mean it's wrong, and, as I said, you might hope they would learn the reason behind it later, but much of the things you tell children, for example, depend on not them understanding it rationally but on obeying their authority figure.



I'm not stupid, a marauder just shot my brain.
zulu_nation8
Profile Blog Joined May 2005
China26351 Posts
October 10 2016 21:28 GMT
#14
How do you suppose people should learn if they cant infer general knowledge from limited experience.

Appeals to authority may be fallacious but since the people who make those appeals are justified, they would not be irrational, nor a rational which is not a word. You are thinking of valid versus invalid types of arguments.
farvacola
Profile Blog Joined January 2011
United States18821 Posts
October 10 2016 21:53 GMT
#15
arational is a word...
"when the Dead Kennedys found out they had skinhead fans, they literally wrote a song titled 'Nazi Punks Fuck Off'"
zulu_nation8
Profile Blog Joined May 2005
China26351 Posts
October 10 2016 21:58 GMT
#16
o nvm
Please log in or register to reply.
Live Events Refresh
GSL
23:00
Replay Cast
Rogue vs GuMiho
Maru vs Solar
PiGStarcraft410
LiquipediaDiscussion
[ Submit Event ]
Live Streams
Refresh
StarCraft 2
PiGStarcraft410
RuFF_SC2 99
CosmosSc2 78
EnDerr 26
StarCraft: Brood War
Britney 14399
Rain 1409
Artosis 759
Aegong 51
Dota 2
PGG 96
LuMiX1
Counter-Strike
Stewie2K1199
flusha471
Foxcn297
Coldzera 10
Super Smash Bros
hungrybox493
AZ_Axe136
Heroes of the Storm
Khaldor164
Other Games
summit1g12873
tarik_tv11429
Grubby2909
shahzam1713
ViBE224
Maynarde110
UpATreeSC97
Organizations
Dota 2
PGL Dota 2 - Main Stream7652
Other Games
gamesdonequick838
BasetradeTV115
StarCraft 2
Blizzard YouTube
StarCraft: Brood War
BSLTrovo
sctven
[ Show 20 non-featured ]
StarCraft 2
• Berry_CruncH274
• RyuSc2 46
• davetesta42
• Hupsaiya 38
• LaughNgamezSOOP
• sooper7s
• AfreecaTV YouTube
• intothetv
• Migwel
• Kozan
• IndyKCrew
StarCraft: Brood War
• HerbMon 8
• blackmanpl 4
• STPLYoutube
• ZZZeroYoutube
• BSLYoutube
League of Legends
• Doublelift5861
• TFBlade1368
Counter-Strike
• Shiphtur304
Other Games
• imaqtpie937
Upcoming Events
Online Event
1m
CranKy Ducklings1
Replay Cast
2h 1m
GSL Code S
9h 31m
herO vs Zoun
Classic vs Bunny
The PondCast
10h 1m
Replay Cast
1d
WardiTV Invitational
1d 11h
OSC
1d 13h
Korean StarCraft League
2 days
SOOP
2 days
sOs vs Percival
CranKy Ducklings
2 days
[ Show More ]
WardiTV Invitational
2 days
Cheesadelphia
2 days
CSO Cup
2 days
GSL Code S
3 days
Sparkling Tuna Cup
3 days
Replay Cast
4 days
Wardi Open
4 days
Replay Cast
5 days
Replay Cast
5 days
RSL Revival
5 days
Cure vs Percival
ByuN vs Spirit
RSL Revival
6 days
herO vs sOs
Zoun vs Clem
Liquipedia Results

Completed

CSL Season 17: Qualifier 2
BGE Stara Zagora 2025
Heroes 10 EU

Ongoing

JPL Season 2
BSL 2v2 Season 3
BSL Season 20
KCM Race Survival 2025 Season 2
NPSL S3
Rose Open S1
CSL 17: 2025 SUMMER
2025 GSL S2
BLAST.tv Austin Major 2025
ESL Impact League Season 7
IEM Dallas 2025
PGL Astana 2025
Asian Champions League '25
BLAST Rivals Spring 2025
MESA Nomadic Masters
CCT Season 2 Global Finals
IEM Melbourne 2025
YaLLa Compass Qatar 2025
PGL Bucharest 2025
BLAST Open Spring 2025

Upcoming

Copa Latinoamericana 4
CSLPRO Last Chance 2025
CSLPRO Chat StarLAN 3
K-Championship
SEL Season 2 Championship
Esports World Cup 2025
HSC XXVII
Championship of Russia 2025
Murky Cup #2
Esports World Cup 2025
BLAST Bounty Fall 2025
BLAST Bounty Fall Qual
IEM Cologne 2025
FISSURE Playground #1
TLPD

1. ByuN
2. TY
3. Dark
4. Solar
5. Stats
6. Nerchio
7. sOs
8. soO
9. INnoVation
10. Elazer
1. Rain
2. Flash
3. EffOrt
4. Last
5. Bisu
6. Soulkey
7. Mini
8. Sharp
Sidebar Settings...

Advertising | Privacy Policy | Terms Of Use | Contact Us

Original banner artwork: Jim Warren
The contents of this webpage are copyright © 2025 TLnet. All Rights Reserved.