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Everywhere, ruthlessness is on the rise. In every nook and cranny on the planet it looks as though brute force is overwhelming any alternative form of human relations.

Clearly, some kind of fundamental transition is underway. I am convinced that what we are witnessing is the end of the Age of Ideology. The protracted demise of ideology is slowly creating the ultimate vacuum of power: determining how governance itself should be governed.

That is to say, the ultimate authority in our worldly existence is the authority to determine what the structure and functioning of the political process (which includes the government, with its particular functions) and the economy should be. Basically, we are talking about deciding upon the organizing principle for society. "Real justice" is a new (to most people) candidate for that position.

The Age of Ideology began in 1689, the year John Locke's Two Treatises of Government was published. With that book Liberalism was born. Liberalism is the meta-ideology that has spawned narrower political ideologies ranging from libertarianism to conservatism to political liberalism (so, lower-case) to (non-Marxist) socialism. The other meta-ideologies (with their own offspring) have been Nationalism, Marxism, and Fascism.

Ideology was consciously conceived by European thinkers as a secular replacement for theology for governing governance. Liberalism and Marxism represent attempts at deriving the correct, universal ideology. Nationalism and Fascism are ideologies in which adherents believe this or that nation or group (usually 'race') 'ought' to rule universally by virtue of a people's inherent 'superiority'.

As Europeans spread across the entire planet they took their culture with them, with the seedlings of ideology in it. That process did not end until the late 1800's. Shortly after that came WWI, an orgy of destruction and death among nations touting Nationalism. Then came, in short order, the Great Depression then World War II, in which Fascist nations took on Marxist and Liberal nations. After that we had the so-called Cold War in which Liberalism defeated Marxism (or at least nations claiming it as their ideology). The triumph of Liberalism was most complete in the economic sphere.

The two most fundamental tenets of Liberalism are a belief in equality and a belief in the existence of pre-existing 'Natural Rights' ("pre-existing" meaning those Rights are said to have been 'discovered', not invented by people). It has always been claimed by many adherents of Liberalism, as it was by Locke, that equality and Rights come from the God of the Bible, but an atheist can believe in both as fervently as anyone else can.

As early as the late 1700's European philosophers, especially the French philosophés and Immanuel Kant, were completely exorcising God from purely secular, philosophical foundations for Liberalism. Then came the utilitarians. They made ethics a strictly secular calculation based on a particular view of human nature, i.e. that human beings seek 'pleasure' and seek to avoid 'pain'. Of course, for utilitarians trying to define those terms universally became a major pain. Even so, the utilitarian principle of 'doing the most good for the greatest number 'was absorbed into the Liberal tradition as a means of testing alternative actions.

The most important point for present purposes is that, as an ideology, Liberalism was becoming increasingly secular. Meanwhile, Marxism, Nationalism, and Fascism have been secular from the start (though adherents of all of them might make appeals to religious people—and any of them might appeal to adherents of any religion).

Yet, theology survived. Beginning in the 1970's theologists in the U.S. began questioning the validity of privileging secular beliefs over religious beliefs in governance (if not—yet—in governing governance). That has had certain implications for politics in the U.S., but most important is the simple fact that theology began to challenge the preeminent status of ideology. That challenging posture has generally been associated with religious fundamentalism.

Living in nations where governance is governed by Liberalism (or any other ideology) does create an existential crisis for religious fundamentalists. They feel forced to choose between two world views. (World views reveal how their adherents' see themselves as human beings). It seems like most fundamentalists have pretty much decided that they must choose religion, but as a group they have not yet come to grips with all of the implications of that choice.

The personal crises felt by religious fundamentalists in the West did not begin to be fully realized until after the fall of the Soviet Union. While that behemoth existed it represented an overweening threat to the 'Free World'. For that reason, even after religious fundamentalism began to emerge it remained subordinated to Liberalism as long as that threat existed.

Meanwhile, fundamentalist Islam was becoming a vehicle for not only Arabs but other non-Western people angry with the Modern world that had been imposed upon the world by Europeans and their progeny. Initially Marxism served as the foundation of 'anti-colonial' movements, including the 'Pan-Arab' movement—e.g., Egypt's Nasser then the Ba'ath Party that took power in Syria and Iraq in the 1960's—but it has been replaced almost everywhere with Islam.

Whether the source of animosity towards modernity is 'colonialism' (i.e., ethnic prejudice—expressed as economic exploitation or exclusion) or whether the antipathy comes from a specifically theological critique of modernity, becoming an expression of that anger has made militant Islam a powerful force. People often call it an ideology, but it is a theology. Being a theology, it is inherently anti-ideology.

ISIS has taken rage at modernity to its ultimate extreme. It uses Islam as a fig leaf to justify violence against anything that can be characterized as Modern. Of late, extremely disaffected people in the West have been using ISIS as a fig leaf for cover for personal acts of violence.

Of course, there are also violent divisions within Islam. Like all warfare based on beliefs, those conflicts are nasty, brutish, and all but endless.

At the same time that religious fundamentalism has been developing, secular challenges to ideology have also arisen. One of those challenges has come in the form of Critical Theory and the other in the form of postmodernism. (Actually, it is more accurate to say that both of those together constitute the Postmodern—capitalized—perspective, but separating them for present purposes will make things less complicated.)

Both Critical Theory and postmodernism have as their ultimate concern the penultimate 'emancipation' of the individual. That explains the similarities in the rhetoric of people who have accepted the Postmodern perspective and people who are motivated by an anti-government sentiment, such as the people of the Tea Party in the U.S.

Critical Theory has focused on the threats to the sovereignty of the individual that are intrinsic to ideology itself. It was initiated by European Marxists (specifically Max Horkheimer and Theodor Adorno) who had fled to the U.S. to escape Fascism. They eventually realized that Marxism represented a threat to the individual as surely as (from their point of view) capitalism always had. It finally occurred to the people developing Critical Theory that it is the nature of ideology itself—as a doctrine, even one touting liberty and equality—to seek to subjugate the individual.

Postmodernism, as I am using that term here, has approached emancipation epistemologically. Those postmodernists, led by Jacques Derrida, have taken to its logical extreme the questioning of intersubjective knowledge: on what basis can anyone be required to accept any 'truth claim' of any other person?

Postmodernists have concluded that there are only two ways any truth claim gets accepted by any other persons. One is votive acceptance on an individual basis (which might or might not have anything to do with 'so-called' rational deliberation—or a spiritual experience). The only other way a truth claim gets accepted, according to postmodernists, is through some kind of "contest of power" (Michel Foucault). The claim to 'the truth' of any ideology (or theology), especially as a basis for governing governance, is a most pertinent example.

Like religious fundamentalists, postmodernists (in the broader sense) are wrestling with the implications of their critique of ideology for governing governance. That explains how religious fundamentalists and postmodernists can also be so similar in places in their attitudes and the words they use.

Liberalism is the only meta-ideology to make a truth claim about justice per se its foundation (though, of course, all adherents of any ideology would say theirs is 'just' because it is 'true'). The history of civilization demonstrates that where no concept of justice prevails, rule will be exercised by the most ruthless. The question becomes, what can replace Liberalism as a claim to knowing what justice is?

It is true that the 'other-worldly' can provide a path to justice. As an old song known only to this author says, "Wherever there is love/ truth and justice shine." That kind of justice would, however, follow from universal governance on an individual basis. If it were to be realized none of the institutional trappings of civilization would remain.

Short of an internal transformation common to every individual on the planet, justice is a worldly matter. That means both its determiners and its referents must be contained within material existence. So no truth claim can contribute to worldly justice unless it can be verified within material existence. Otherwise, any attempt at justice necessarily involves some people imposing their beliefs, be they ideological or theological, on others. For some people to impose their beliefs on others is universally recognized as an injustice by all people who are on the receiving end of that circumstance (including any who might have denied the injustice of it if they were at any time on the other end of it).

The truth claims in the preceding paragraph form the starting point of real justice. It can be called "real" justice because it is an approach to justice that involves no ideological or theological beliefs whatsoever. Beliefs are real, but only for the believer; the determiners of justice must be real for everyone. Real justice is completely consistent with the conditions pertaining to justice described in the preceding paragraph.

The ethic of real justice is mutual respect. The implications of mutual respect for governing governance are very similar to those of Liberalism. That is because equality implies mutual respect and applying the ethic of mutual respect to governing governance would maximize liberty as a practical matter. In governing governance real justice would reinforce political democracy and transform the functioning of the market-based economy while retaining its defining institutions.

With real justice the applicability of the ethic of justice is limited to a large but finite domain: effecting choices (choosing among perceived alternatives and taking action to bring that choice to fruition). [Warren J. Samuels all but defined "social power" as the ability to effect choices in "Welfare Economics, Property, and Power" in Perspectives of Property, edited by Gene Wunderlich and W.L. Gibson.] So, within that domain all people must be governed by respect for one another; outside it people can only be governed by personal morality.

As a matter of governing personal behavior real justice boils down to a handful of prohibitions on conduct involving other people: no killing, harming, coercing, lying, cheating, or stealing in the process of effecting any choice. Whatever the organizing principle of a society might be, refining the applicability of prohibitions on personal behavior in society and enforcing them (a system of criminal and civil justice) is the primary function of government; real justice would be no exception.

Any government, as a set of institutions, is part of a community's political process. Both the political process in its totality and the economy are subject to being governed by real justice because the former is the process of effecting choices for the community as a whole and the latter is nothing but effecting choices.

Regarding the political process, we are talking about how it should itself be organized. Real justice would require a democratic political process even if one did not already exist.

Beliefs will always inform individuals' participation in the democratic political process. Everyone in the community must abide by any outcome in that process. So, some people will always have to abide by beliefs they do not share. In a democratic process, however, freedom of speech provides everyone the opportunity to participate in the process of determining what the outcomes will be. A just distribution of political rights governs further participation in the process. It is the difference between having one's desired outcome thwarted in the fairest possible contest and having a blatantly unfair contest.

Although real justice is strictly rational, it does not contradict the ethical teachings of any religion of which this author is aware (within the group, if not to say regarding all people). Though rationality can challenge claims pertaining to material existence emanating from religion, as one who believes fervently in God, this author (who is also the author of real justice) can attest that rationality is not the enemy of spirituality.

As things stand we are confronted with a Hobbesian war of all against all based on beliefs. Theologues and ideologues of all stripes strive to make their claim of authority to govern governance supreme. In the war of all against all, achieving that supremacy is a matter of survival. Such a war can only end if one side has thoroughly subjugated all others.

That war is already underway. In some places its violent effects are intermittent, but in others they are constant, making human life nastier, more brutish, and shorter than it has been in a long time.

As the legitimacy of Liberalism decays, nations in the West are edging ever closer to such internecine conflict in ideological divisions as well as the division between ideology and theology. As with the personal crisis felt by religious fundamentalists in liberal nations, those divisions were repressed when a Marxist Soviet Union presented an external threat, but that is no longer the case.

So, real justice is humanity's only hope for a universal ethic of justice. It would replace all ideology and would supercede all theology in governing governance. A strictly rational approach to worldly justice, recognizing its limits, is at the same time our only hope for avoiding universal warfare stemming from contests of power fomented by competing beliefs.

Rather than become yet another cause in that war, real justice would have to be achieved without violating the prohibitions on conduct it contains. If we could do that, if we could establish real justice using only just means, that would be humanity's greatest possible triumph.

For those who are interested in learning more about real justice, much more is available at www.ajustsolution.com. The Home Page provides an overview, then focuses on the implications of real justice for the economy. There is a separate page for real justice. Whatever its faults as a Web site, it is free, ad-free, free of solicitations for donations, and free of unsolicited follow-ups of any kind.