In what seems like a lifetime ago, a friend explained to me his thumbnail distinction between philosophy and ideology. Philosophy requires one to fit one’s mind to the world; ideology compels one to fit the world to one’s mind. The crux was how each viewed human nature: philosophy accepted the imperfectability of human nature; ideology demanded its perfection.

Within this admittedly narrow limning, one can see how philosophy and ideology respond when confronted by reality. By accepting the imperfectability of human nature, a philosophic attitude encourages intellectual, emotional, spiritual, and societal growth.

By rejecting the imperfectability of human nature and recognizing instead only the capricious whims of untrammeled will, the horrific consequences of the ideologues’ effort to fit the world to their minds can be seen from Paris during the 18th-century Reign of Terror and Stalin’s purges to Mao’s “Great Leap Forward” and the killing fields of Cambodia.

Because it believes it already has correctly answered all the great questions of human existence (or at least the ones its adherents care about), ideology requires compelling the less enlightened to conform perfectly with its dictates; thus, ideology’s fundamental purpose is not contemplative but coercive.