The Creative Approach To Ideology
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The Creative Approach To Ideology
Instead of "true or false" ask "what if?"
When most people approach ideology, they approach it from a “true or false” perspective. There is another way to approach ideology: the creative approach.
Suppose everyone in the world could teleport. How would the world change? Let’s say it’s an app that you download on your phone. You open up maps, select a spot, press a button, and you appear there. What would happen?
Well, borders would matter a lot less. People could commute from anywhere in the world to anywhere else in the world. Where people lived would change. You could get a house deep in the mountains or on an island and go to work in a big office center each day. The real estate market would change, since “location” would no longer matter. People might have secret locations where parties and special events convene. You might only be able to find a secret party a thousand miles in the woods if someone sends you an invite.
How would this change society? Suppose you and everyone involved in a niche interest could actually meet up in person. There might only be a thousand of you in the world, but now you can meet up every day. You could appear as a flash mob in any town square in the world, a major newspaper office, or the President’s bedroom. Now, “radicalization” becomes a totally different issue. People might suddenly appear in places they aren’t supposed to or create flash mobs that actually “flash” into a space.
The very wealthy might start building homes underground, since teleporting into the Earth would be dangerous. Select the wrong spot and you’re buried under the dirt. The exact location of underground lairs would be kept a closely guarded secret. If we were writing this as a story, we might choose a real estate agent or underground lair builder as our main character. Can you see a story this character might be involved in?
Of course, we could go in a totally different direction. What happens if your teleporter breaks while you’re all alone in the artic? Is there a teleportation emergency line that will come get you? What happens to the very poor who can’t afford teleportation in a society where it is required to get to work? Are there entire districts of nothing but industrial space, since no one needs to build housing near them? Is one state designated the “landfill state” and all trash from the entire world teleported there so that the world is clean and this one location walled off from the rest of the ecosystem has to deal with it?
What we’re doing from this premise is world-building. Any good sci-fi writer if given that premise could create an entire world just by asking what would happen if that premise was true. There are many different stories one could create from that idea. The way to create a world or story is simply to as “what if this was true?”
One can approach ideologies the same way. “What if everyone had human rights and you had to respect them?” is as much a worldbuilding premise as “what if everyone could teleport?” “The free market” is as much a technological innovation as spaceships. If you accept these ideas as a world-building premise rather than debate them, where would they lead?
Here are some real-world ideas that would make excellent world-building premises if accepted as true:
The world is only 6000 years old, and dinosaur bones were put in the ground to test your faith.
People can be born in the wrong bodies or wrong-gendered bodies.
Everyone is born condemned to eternal torture and can only escape it by following one divine being.
You can shift reality with your thoughts and emotions through a process known as “manifestation.”
Everyone is equal and all inequality is actually the result of wrongdoing or oppression.
Many aspects of the world we take for granted are actually as wild as any sci-fi premise. Some science fiction stories show this by imagining a world without one of those aspects we take for granted. For example, Ursula K. Le Guin’s book The Left Hand of Darkness imagines an alien society that lacks the concept of fixed gender.
If we lived in a society where everyone was one biological sex, the idea that there are two types of people and you need one of each to reproduce would be a wild sci-fi premise. From this premise, one could imagine all the conflicts that exist between men and women. What happens if they don’t get along after they’ve had a child? Maybe they’d invent a contract to stay together so that doesn’t happen? Would people have to go through elaborate rituals to find the person they want to reproduce with?
If you were worldbuilding a sci-fi story with the premise “it takes two people with opposite biology to reproduce” would you make a world as strange as ours? Could you see all the ways that men and women might relate from this premise? Could you invent marriage, divorce, family courts, dating, birth control, and all the other oddities of our world?
When most people approach ideology, they approach it from a “true or false” perspective. There is another way to approach ideology: the creative approach.
The creative approach is best exemplified by the improv saying “yes and.” When improv actors do a scene, they never negate what the other creates by saying “no, but.” Instead, they say “yes and.” This same approach can be applied to ideology. Rather than debating what another proposes (“no, but”), run with it (“yes, and”) and see where it leads. Suppose we accept everything you’re saying as true. Then what?
This process leads to interesting places. Often, people have not thought through the implications of their ideology, the same way that a bad sci-fi author hasn’t thought through their story.
“It’s about an alien invasion!” So what happens? “Humanity unites and fights them!” They do? There’s no infighting? Where do the aliens strike first? Does this impact people’s beliefs in any way? How do religions handle this? Did governments know about aliens before? If they did, is there any sense of betrayal among people that they weren’t told? Did conspiracy theorists predict the invasion? Do they have greater status and influence in society now? What was needed to fight the aliens off? Do the most wealthy nations have greater access to the weapons needed to win the day? What if poorer nations do? Does humanity become militaristic and focus on space conquest in a traumatic reaction to the possibility of future threats? You could build your whole story around the answer to any one of these questions, but a bad author will just write “they fight” and not consider it further.
Likewise, bad ideologues will simply assert their premise without thinking it through. “Everyone should be equal!” Okay, how will that work? Will you redistribute wealth? Do you just mean wealth or are you including looks, intelligence, and physical ability? Height? Do we need to invent artificial womb technology so everyone can give birth? Is the expectation that those who excel will lower themselves, or should we punish people who aren’t “equal” to the strong? From that premise “everyone should be equal” we could actually develop a full Harrison Bergeron society or a eugenic one where the “less equal” are removed. Have you thought this through?
The creative approach really enrages ideologues. This rage is similar to the rage a fanatical fanboy feels when someone begins messing with the mythology of their favorite fantasy world. Imagine how a Star Wars fan would react if you began really exploring the mechanics and worldbuilding implications of the Force in a way they didn’t like. Star Wars is just a fantasy world. How do you think Christians react when you start really exploring the implications of “original sin” or liberals when you start really exploring the implications of “tolerance?”
Idealogues will object that their ideology has real-world consequences. Yet, this is all the more reason to explore them. They gave us these ideas. We are just building on them. The rage they react with is misdirected self-hatred. Building in the worlds they gave us exposes the implications of their premise, and people doing wrong don’t like to be exposed. If there was a solid foundation, then building upon it would not be an issue. The rage reveals insecurity and doubt.
Yet for those genuinely interested in the truth, this process is fun. In the same way that someone who loves stories wants to explore creative questions, someone who loves truth wants to know the implications of their ideas. If the ideas lead somewhere strange, they might discover something new. If they lead somewhere dangerous, they might discover an idea was not what they thought. Instead of devolving into the “no, but” shouting match so many political discussions have become, this approach instead invites people to play together and explore ideas. What if this is true? Then what?
Children’s Justice uses a creative approach to ideology. In the book, I accept all the ideas of critical social justice as a premise and then explore the implications of those ideas for children. Those who react to the book with either rage or joy reveal their own relationship to the truth. If you want to try the creative approach with some of the most influential ideas in the world, get the book here.