The Age of Ideology slowly ends in the rising dust of its own failures. Our learning has been augmented by the knowledge that no matter what type of “system” we design, they all end in failure because they focus too much on making everyone get along, and not enough on real-world results.
Something called The Human Problem invades every human group. It consists of herd behavior brought on by a desire to get along with others, and that desire replaces goals, at which point the group is shaped by the demands of the individuals in it instead of the shared principles, mission or purpose that originally created it.
We thought we could avoid The Human Problem by avoiding the systems based on social engineering, like Communism and National Socialism. As it turns out, any system based on “equality” — a group-think term used to conceal the individualistic motivation of all involved — ends up in the same place through inversion, or the replacement of meaning with “safe” terms that flatter the group.
Consider the term “equality” itself. When originally designed, it meant that you did not commit an ad hominem and say to something, “You’re from another caste, family, tribe, region or religion, therefore your opinion is automatically wrong.” Instead, you listened to what he had to say, and if it was correct, treated it as closer to the truth.
However, most humans tend to think backward, since they think in terms of effects on themselves, which makes them think the effect was intended, and blinds them to the actual causes. These people therefore are oblivious to the causes of those effects, and so when unequal results occur, they blame the results instead of considering the actual cause, which is that people are unequal.
Over time, the term “equality” inevitably and without exception morphs from treating people fairly to ensuring that everyone has the same level of power, wealth, status and acceptance. To do this, since they cannot raise the lower above their own ability level, they have to tear down the higher and simplify every standard to the mediocre, because that way everyone feels accepted and important.
Through this method, “equality” comes to mean taking from the stronger and giving to the weaker. In the same way, morality has come to mean tolerance of the immoral; fairness has come to mean relativistic judgment; intelligence now means having the “right” opinions memorized. Any attempt to use social engineering to create a more equal, fair or just society seems to result in these inversions.
As such, we recognize now that we are have been living under an undiagnosed regime which we might call neo-Communism. In the years after WW2, it became clear in the West that whatever ideas appealed to the masses would win out over ideas that required sacrifice of personal freedoms in order to have social order, as the Axis powers required of their citizens.