What persuades men and women to mistake each other from time to time for gods or vermin is ideology. One can understand well enough how human beings may struggle and murder for good material reasons-reasons connected, for instance, with their physical survival. It is much harder to grasp how they may come to do so in the name of something as apparently abstract as ideas. Yet ideas are what men and women live by, and will occasionally die for.
About this quote
- What does it mean?
- Ideology transforms abstract ideas into powerful motivations that can justify struggle or death.
- In plain terms
- Ideas make people fight for abstract causes.
- What can you take from it?
- Ideas drive human sacrifice.
Where it applies
Putting it to work
Questions to consider
- Why do people die for ideas?
- Is ideology always harmful?
Another view
It simplifies complex motivations into ideology.
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