Just a thought I’ve been ruminating on for a while that finally coalesced the other day:
Modern ideologies (such as marxism, libertarianism, MAGAism, etc) have, in reference to the massive success of religious ideologies and their framework, constructed themselves as if they are religions.
What do I mean by this?
- An all encompassing nature - religion is so sturdy because it attempts to provide a framework for every interaction between you and the rest of the world. Every person you meet, every word you hear from someone else, every thing you experience, you filter through your “belief framework”. In the past, this was basically limited to morality judgements “is this thing righteous or not?”
So even if your religious book(s) didn’t explicitly mention the scenario you find yourself in, religions offer enough “structure” such that any experience you undergo can be fed to this structure and an answer can be produced.
Modern political ideology has come to understand this, and has constructed itself such that now your political ideology can supplant your religious ideology, as your political ideology now can encompass your religious ideology and all the structure and function it provides (atleast, the political ideologies attempt this, I don’t think they’ve yet succeeded, which imo is why people who solely exercise a political ideology seem so schitzophrenic and unanchored in their beliefs/opinions).
I hope I’ve been able to convey what I mean in a way others can understand but if not just ask me to clarify.
This is getting pretty evident in the modern day as new cases come readily to the minds of the other commenters. However it's not new; it can be traced from the Babylon of Ninus and Semiramis, through the deification of Pharaoh, past emperor worship in Rome and the Herodians in Israel, into the Holy Roman Empire. Political control finds that counterfeiting religion is the surest way to control the whole individual.
Your noticing that ideologies fail when people try to apply them holistically is also a function of their counterfeit status. This suggests either that there is one truth that does unify everything, or that no truth can be postulated to unify anything. However, most people recognize that full nihilism is counterproductive so they seize upon various ideologies whether or not they are complete.
Obviously I'm advertising the search for total truth and unity as better than stopping when you've partially comprehended any ideology. I'm also proposing that God as revealed in the Bible is the ultimate answer, the total truth, and the one we should continue to seek every day who will not fail to anchor us. Recognizing the incompleteness of anything proposed by mere man is an important step toward recognizing holistic truth that comes from more than man, so hold onto this nugget of truth and keep up the search.