“It’s not the content of your belief that makes you dangerous, it’s the way you believe it” – Robin Koerner
I’m including a link to a very good article that talks about understanding and identifying this psycho-toxic and socio-toxic phenomena on the rise, even as Nietzsche predicted more than 100 years ago.
https://fee.org/articles/the-diagnosis-and-treatment-of-ideological-possession/
Some interesting highlights of identifying ideological possession from the article for those who might not want to wade into it:
Ideological possession happens when people start valuing something other than the pursuit of Truth (which can sometimes be unpleasant or inconvenient) as the highest ideal. Instead they start pursuing things like personal power, or the avoidance of discomfort, for two easy examples.
Some of the symptoms:
-the insistence that anyone who disfavors a specific view or policy of the ideology does so because they are morally deficient
-frequent use of 1-dimensional and often hateful labels to describe rafts of people they’ve never met, who clearly are not 1-dimensional beings (including univariate analysis I’ve spoken about frequently on-group, used by various agendas to identify vast groups of people as “racist”, “sexist” or “trans-phobe”)
-the use of a few carefully-selected quotes or instances as absolute proof someone is evil and to be entirely disregarded
-the belief that a single applied principle will almost instantly answer most important moral and/or political issues (ie, equity, more guns, getting religion, equality of outcome, joining a specific political party, believing as the possessed believers)
-when the results of an ideologically justified action have unintended or even opposite effect, the possessed “doubles down”, asserting that things will be fixed by more of the same action (ie, more guns, more religion, more politically slanted activity, more unprovoked military action in areas that don’t involve us, more feminization of boys at younger ages). Or at the extreme, by asserting something is wrong with either the data itself or perhaps even with the very nature of reality itself!
-more enjoyment taken in defending existing beliefs as-is than in exploring opportunities to make one’s beliefs a more accurate representation of reality
-the collection of data that supports existing beliefs (data-mining) rather than seeking data that would help correct false-beliefs.
-the offering of unsolicited opinions without any interest in empathic engagement with the recipient (self-justification/service vs participation with others to mutual benefit)
-the possessed would rather reform society and institutions to better serve their ideology than reform the ideology to better serve people and the society.
Hopefully these symptoms don’t ring too many bells with too many people! But I would heartily recommend reading the entire article. It’s not too intellectually strenuous!
© 2026 – SoulSequel
18 responses to “Ideological possession”
But Jorduhn Peterphiles aren’t ideologically possessed,…. Nahhhhhhhhhh.
@luftballooneyegouge
Some choose to be; though it’s quite certain the man would not endorse or approve of it. he’s known for actively teaching against it.
There *are* things wrong with reality… otherwise why would we need laws, a criminal justice system, and groups for addiction, loss etc?
@Jear77
Reality gets along just fine without these things.
Humans however seem to require them. Specifically those who never grow the hell up to realize their full potential.
Unrealized children need them too. It is unbelievable that some still haven’t made this link.
@griz reality may, yes. But how many times have you pointed out that if we don’t have such things we would dissolve into anarchicy… which is also a possible reality that you wish to avoid.
@Jear77
You were trying to say that reality is flawed, which it isn’t.
So the next level of resolution is humans.
But are we flawed?
Or just immature? Not fully realized unto what we can be?
And the main reason children need rules is so they don’t destroy themselves before they can become all that they can become.
@griz seeing that, at least according to the bible, most of humanity simply can’t be saved – either due to god making them to be disposed of, or by their own choices, or by some convoluted way both could be equally true, it would amseem as that we were designed to be flawed, broken, damaged goods drom day 1.
@Jear77
I suspected there was some ideological Calvinism lurking in your past. It’s vile in its assertion that some are just destined to be damned. And it does lead to a lot of defeatist nihilism in people who escape from it. (Who find they cannot be “performing saints”).
Nobody is excluded, save by their own choice to not seek God. Which is the same as not seeking the best way of living, with the most meaning.
And even in a world of nothing more than physical evolutionary forces (no God/meaning), any organism not seeking such, is selected against.
Even in an imagined world of “no God”, the base precept of God would be axiomatic! Those who don’t seek “the fullness” of existence, go extinct.
@griz isn’t there verses about dishes *designed* to be broken? Not Calvinism, but a straightforward reading of the bible. And this sense goes all the way back to genesis 1:1. Seeing that god, should it exist, knew how things would turn out from the get go (another verse) and STILL chose to design the world this way… instead of avoiding the problems of the universe as it is… no, simply, no.
@Jear77
You would have to find that verse and provide some context to show it says what you think it’s saying.
What led you to believe the Bible was a set of straight forward texts that did not require study or honoring the context?
Look I get it. You ideologued yourself to a religion. It resulted in spiritual and psychological abuse. I see it all the time. But rather than running around trying to prove that everything is broken, except that it’s just you that’s broken and fix it.
Endlessly flagellating with the pieces, insisting it’s unfixable, and looking for a replacement ideology are only going to cause more of the suffering that you are highly allergic to.
@griz there is a sense in the bible that time flows WAY differently in heaven than it does here in (on) earth, such to the fact that god could be outside time itself. What that means is that god *could* be equally as much at an infinite amount of time before any “let there be” happened as well as an infinite amount of time after the judgement simultaneously and it would mean nothing to it. This collapsing of existence, time into a single point means if x doesn’t work, it can redo things ad nauseam… even to the point of overriding free will, the past, present, and yet to be from our perspective. But that point is getting me off topic. The point here is that even without resorting to time manipulation, there is no way that reality should be as it is.
@Jear77
There is a specific subset of dire psychological conditions that stem from the belief that one is either God, or above God.
They are “dire”, because of how they always end up if not properly addressed.
Fancying that one can sit in judgement of the Highest Idea, raised to the power of Infinity . . . can never end well.
Trying to ponder such possibilities in awe, perhaps. Judging them as deficient, vile or even “objectively evil” (tying into another thread of the morning) . . . is an exercise in how to most effectively pathologize oneself.
@griz not really. It’s a simple assertion that god, should it exist, can’t be trusted… as that trust ultimately fails us – both as a species and individually due to this lovely thing called “entropy”
@Jear77
So are you now proposing the last 3.8 billion years of stable and progressive life on Earth, prove nothing regarding steadfast trustworthiness?
Much of our suffering comes from ideological infections (addictions, possessions).
When we free ourselves from them, our outlook changes.
@griz When it suits you you resort to science… when it doesn’t, you follow the bible’s timeline?
@Jear77
I don’t resort to ideologies!
I used every tool laid out for me to grow the Truth. Which is a very Godly process.
Ideologues can’t do this because they are owned by an agenda and a stance they cannot stray beyond without sabotaging the slavery they think is making them free.
It’s all rather perverse.
You have the valid example of what this is like in an ideological theistic religion. Now compare this forward to the ideologies of scientism post-modernism and Neo-Marxism; and see the exact same processes at work in their ideologues, as you saw in Christian ideologues.
And you will be one step closer to being free from all enslaving ideologies.
@griz and isn’t this the pot calling the kettle black when i do the same thing? Oh, there’s a difference. I don’t claim what i’m doing isn’t hypocrisy… i claim it!
@Jear77
You are trying to equate freedom to use the best tool for the job, with heresy against the doctrines of (in your case) a conflicting set of possessing ideologies. (Christianism, scientism, postmodernism, skepticism, nihilism, and others all mashed together, but none of them complete in and of themself).
That’s why you’ve had to try flying the imagined flag of the proud hypocrite.
Escape the trap of “the saving ideology”, and you too can have the freedom of being able to use the best tool for the job without fearing heresy against one or another of them.