Why It’s Psychologically Dangerous To Confuse Political Ideologies With Religious Movements

The following is a transcript excerpt from Dr. JOderdan Peterson’s conversation with Rav Arora on the necessary distinction between political and religious beliefs. You can listen to or Watch Listen to the entire podcast on DailyWire+

Podcast time: 7:29

It’s psychologically dangerous to confuse political explanations and ideologies with religious and spiritual ideologies and movements. You don’t want the political to carry the weight of the spiritual, I don’t think. I think it’s dangerous. I believe ideologies function as crippled religions. So they have the motive force of religious belief and the attractiveness of religious belief, which I think is actually a necessity for human beings because we’re religious by nature, but they don’t have the symbolic complexity that a religion has — a well-established religion with its mystical elements and its dogmatic elements. 

You also claim that religious belief is in decline. It is clear that organized church attendance in certain countries is declining. Christianity is growing at an unbelievable rate in China, for example, so it’s not necessarily a global phenomenon. With regards to abandoning ideology, there’s danger in confusing your political beliefs and your religious beliefs, not noting that there’s a difference between them. One of the associated dangers there, I think, especially in totalitarian utopian systems, is the proclivity to raise the leader — whoever that might be — to the status of a demigod. That certainly happened in the Soviet Union and in Mao’s China. It is possible that it will occur again in modern China. You know, you’re supposed to render unto Caesar that which is Caesar’s and render unto God that which is God’s. That’s the fundamental ethos that underlies the idea of separation of church and state, and I think it’s a good psychological truth as well. […]

The problem with ideologies, as far as I’m concerned, is that they’re not useful as practical, problem-solving guides. Many of the problems we face are extremely complex. They need to be decomposed in a sophisticated way into their constituent elements until they’re differentiated enough so that partial solutions for some of the problem can arise as a consequence of practical endeavors. This requires a willingness to think in detail and the ability to develop specialized knowledge. Ideology can blind you to your own stupidity, and that’s actually dangerous. 

We could also take the example of poverty. We can all agree that poverty as it is, I believe, is unacceptable. That’s the starting point and the motivation. You might then say: “Well, what is poverty?” And you could conclude that it’s lack of money. From that you could conclude, because there’s an unequal distribution of resources, that if the rich would only loosen their grip on wealth, then there wouldn’t be poverty. Then it’s not much of a leap from that to the rich are by definition causing poverty and morally culpable for it. Even though there is some truth to that, some of the time in some situations, that doesn’t mean that it’s always true and it’s the only reason all the time. There’s an additional danger, which is that you now have a solution. So, you’re smart. You’re not the problem, so that you’re moral. You have a convenient enemy, so your dark unexamined motives have a valid target, which you’ve already defined as immoral. And that means you’re more likely to give reign to violent impulses, let’s say, that you should otherwise keep in control. That’s all very dangerous. It’s not sophisticated. It’s emotionally and motivationally dangerous. It can interfere with problem solving. It can confuse you about the depth and limits of your knowledge. You end up thinking you actually understand how the world works, and you don’t understand it at all. You don’t even understand the problems. 

Consider poverty. What does poverty mean to you? What do you mean by alcoholism or poverty? Are you referring to drug abuse? Mental illness? What about physical illness? Education is not enough? Low intelligence Inconscientiousness and intelligence? Antisocial behavior Relative poverty? Absolute poverty? Are you referring to a negative worldview? Are you referring to a lack of ability or willingness to plan for the future. Do you mean total lack of access to material goods? That’s all poverty, and that’s just the beginning of a decomposition. All of those problems are markedly different, and it isn’t obvious that there’s one solution that will address it. It’s not obvious at all. It’s highly unlikely that there is a single solution to all of them. 

Then there’s the complex problem that you have a theory that identifies a problem and explains its existence and offers a solution. So now you’re going to assume that if you could only put that solution in place, that you would do that competently and it would produce the result that’s