Truth vs. Ideology

I was listening in on a conversation today.  There was an elderly couple, maybe in their late sixties, speaking with a person appearing to be of some sort of Spanish or Hispanic background by skin tone who was most likely upper 50's to early 60's in age.
"Hey, my political buddies!" says the single man as he sits down at the table.  The conversation then went to the traditional "hello's" and "how's the wife" kind of conversation one might hear at church, and then they got into.
"That Mitt, he's got a tough road ahead," said the woman.  "But he really said it right when he was talking about those 47%."  I stopped listening at that, knowing the kind of news source they'd been listening to, and what kind of talking points they were going to spew from their mouths.

A week later, the presidential debate.  What a riot that one was.  The president looked baffled almost the entire time - and rightfully so.  Mitt pulled one of those Romney's, and changed his message drastically to win some votes.  Go figure, politicians saying things to get votes - who'd have thought it could happen?  It made me wonder why our arguments - both left and right - seem to be so far apart and yet, so similar.

My opinion on this: Unwillingness to listen to the other side - people trapped within ideology, unable to see the truth.

Here we have two ideological standpoints - conservative and liberal/republican and democratic.  The one factor joining the two together used to be factual data that proved one or the other right.  However, with the advent of political propaganda machines in the form of cable news, we have lost sight of the truth, and have found ourselves locked within ideology.

For reference on this notion, I look at Global Warming.
Facts: Global Warming/Climate Change has been accepted as consensus with the scientific communities of the planet, and conclusions from this theory have stated that humanity causes a good amount of the pollution causing the change.  By burning fossil fuels at the rate we do, we risk increasing the global temperatures to irreversible states due to the amount of greenhouse gases we emit.

So, what do we do about this?  Well, conservatives still have yet to accept the facts.  They continue to deny humanity's involvement in the 'myth' or 'hoax' of the scientific community, and their benefactors (mostly big oil tycoons like the Koch Brothers) double down on carbon energy by saying catchy phrases like "drill, baby, drill," or come up with new ways to sell energy (i.e. Clean Coal - which to many in the scientific community is an oxymoron).

Liberals say we need a carbon tax - a way to regulate the amount of carbon produced and churned into our atmosphere - so that we can make sure people are going to keep their fossil fuel consumption to a minimum. Then again, there are those within the conservative media as well as liberal that argue this tax would make us pay to breath, as humans emit carbon dioxide through exhalation.  Many argue it is a liberal plot to steal our freedoms - people like Glenn Beck and Bill O'Reilly, as well as outspoken opponent Alex Jones.

Overall, however, on the global warming issue, we have yet to reach social consensus - however, we do socially accept the need for better fuel efficiency, solar power, wind power, geo-thermal and bio-fuel.  I think it's funny that more people would accept facets of the solution to the global temperature issue than believe that the global warming issue needs to be addressed, or even exists in the first place.

And this is only one argument where truth goes up against ideology.  God and religion, sex education, creationism vs. evolution and many more social arguments get stuck where they are due to people refusing to believe facts over their own ideological standpoints.  This is one of our biggest tragedies as a species, in my humble opinion, and one that must be fixed before we find it killing ourselves.

If Humanity were a hero in an epic poem, they would be one of those all-powerful gods whose only flaw - the unwillingness to believe something contradictory to the principles of the self - would be its own undoing.

This is where one of the great aspects of human art rests - the contradictory.  Though science and religion could go very well together if married, they will eternally be separated because of the dispute over where everything originated.  Beatrice and Benedick come to mind from Shakespeare's Much Ado About Nothing.  And what a fitting analogy: Science, the bitter woman trying to get the last word in on an lover, knowing she's right and makes some good points, and Religion, the pessimistic yet hopeful man still bludgeoning people over the head with the same old tales.

To make the point on the original note - the whole truth vs. ideology: Since ideology is spinning the truth into its own tale, we can no longer see the facts as they are.  Things are happening in front of us all, but we all have a different story on how they happened.