Ideological Fixation: From the Stone Age to Today's Culture Wars
Azar Gat
Mar 2023 · Tantor Media Inc · Narrated by Shawn K. Jain
headphones
Audiobook
16 hr 16 min
Unabridged
family_home
Eligible
info
reportRatings and reviews aren’t verified Learn More
Want a 1 hr 37 min sample? Listen anytime, even offline.
Add
About this audiobook
After theorists around 1960 proclaimed the "death of ideology," ideological divides and clashes have reemerged with renewed intensity throughout the world. In the United States they have become particularly venomous. Each side in America's escalating ideological civil war charges the other with concocting "fake news" and "alternative facts." The other side is widely viewed as malicious, irrational, or downright stupid, and, often, as barely legitimate. The zeal of the opposing sides is often scarcely less than that which characterized the religious ideologies of old. Indeed, historical religious ideologies have largely been replaced by "secular religions" or "religion substitutes." Ideology consists of normative prescriptions regarding how society should be shaped, together with an interpretive roadmap indicating how this normative vision can be implemented in reality. Ideological Fixation is the result of tensions and conflicts between these two elements. The book focuses on ideologies' factual claims about the world, typically subordinate to, and often distorted by, their normative commitment. In exploring this phenomenon, the book combines insights from evolutionary psychology regarding the nature of some of our deepest proclivities with a broad sweep through history and around the world.
About the author
Azar Gat is Ezer Weitzman Professor of National Security in the School of Political Science, Government, and International Affairs at Tel Aviv University. He is the author of nine books, including A History of Military Thought: From the Enlightenment to the Cold War and War in Human Civilization.
Shawn K. Jain, a Harvard University/Moscow Art Theater School/A.R.T. Institute graduate, has TV credits for shows on Apple TV+, CBS, HBO Max, Amazon Prime, Showtime, and Peacock. He has narrated audiobooks for Penguin Random House, Hachette, Bloomsbury, HarperCollins, Epic!, Blackstone, GraphicAudio, and HQN.
Rate this audiobook
Tell us what you think.
Listening information
Smartphones and tablets
Install the Google Play Books app for Android and iPad/iPhone. It syncs automatically with your account and allows you to read online or offline wherever you are.
Laptops and computers
You can read books purchased on Google Play using your computer's web browser.
