Note by Gurwinder on Substack

An ideology is usually a high-minded mask for a group’s itch to take power and resources from other social groups.

Ideologies quickly become religions to their followers, at which point the solutions proposed by such ideologies can no longer be challenged 

The salient feature of any ideology is the violence that it both covers up and constrains. In other words, an ideology keeps a group “safe” from intruders who might bring with them an infectious strain of thought. There is no room for opposition. Girard once defined ideology as “the idea that everything is either good or bad.”

Ever more scholars see cultures as a kind of mental infection or parasite, with humans as its unwitting host. Organic parasites, such as viruses, live inside the body of their hosts. They multiply and spread from one host to the other, feeding off their hosts, weakening them, and sometimes even killing them. As long as the hosts live long enough to