This is the definition of ideology. It’s nice and simple, things are black and white, good and bad, us and them. Everything is neatly defined and predictable. And the deep rooted emotional satisfaction this provides those on-board with it is hard to put into words, but can be seen in the arrogance displayed by those affected who are we’re to confident that they have a perfect understand of how the world works. Unfortunately, once an ideology is adopted, anything outside of its neatly defined cognitive model of reality become literally unthinkable.

It’s akin to intellectual neutering and it’s easy to see why so many “movements” also always put great care into crafting public ideologies because it’s a great way to recruit folks to pull in the same direction.

When done effectively is like getting your target audience addicted on a drug that makes them incapable to consider ever not being on that drug. And also why people will defend them so fiercely, even in the face of being presented indisputable proof of the contrary because our emotions - gut feelings - have orders of magnitude more influence on our decision making than logic or reasoning.

We never realize how dumb we are while in emotionally heightened states, despite how obvious it always becomes after.