The Human Cost of Ideology

Our opinions are often formed by group ideology, and with the flood of alternative facts, objective truth doesn’t seem to change people's beliefs or behavior.  It's particularly difficult to think differently than the common trend.

Interestingly, we're warned that such conformist thinking prevents learning, but if we approach the truth with a little humility, we'll learn quickly and change wisely.

For example, slavery ended in the 1800's, and we rose up to be a righteous people, right? No. Crude slavery continued for more than a century. The ruling elites in Africa used the slaves they couldn't sell to Europe anymore to work locally on plantations and produce the 'legitimate products' that could be sold internationally. At its height in Nigeria, parents were afraid to let their children play outside for fear they would be kidnapped and sold as slaves.

For centuries, extractive policies transferred wealth from colonial regions leaving countries and their inhabitants devastated for generations. The Arab slave trade spanned a thousand years; there were still 300,000 enslaved in Saudi Arabia when it was legally ended in the 1960's.

In our morally adjusted America, slavery evolved into employment at slave-equivalent wages. Child labor moved from the homestead to large businesses.  As the industrial revolution expanded the economy, the elite became stunningly wealthy by the extractive economics of poverty wages. 

Despite attempts to regulate safe working conditions and reasonable wages, harsh and unreasonable labor practices continue today, and the bottom 20% are the most affected.  Employees are expendable in most working environments, and they're available for abuse according to many identified recently.

If the national minimum wage isn't a

living wage in even the cheapest

city in the country, it's not a

 living wage anywhere.

Today's workplace is grueling, stressful, and surprisingly hostile, or so concludes an in-depth study by the Rand Corp., Harvard Medical School, and the University of California published in 2017 by Fox news and others:

• 20% report recent abuse or harassment at work.  Nearly one in five workers - which the study calls "disturbingly high" - say they face a hostile or threatening environment at work, which can include sexual harassment and bullying.
61% of American workers perform repetitive or intense physical work.  This work can include moving heavy loads or maintaining painful positions. More than half are exposed to hazards such as loud environments, extreme temperatures, hazardous materials, or unhealthy air.

All the words have changed, but the moral dilemma remains the same as does the behavior. The justifications we're offered are no more legitimate than those that were offered in the colonial era.  

Ideologically, what are the things we're supposed to have learned? 

From a Christian perspective, what's visible here?  Anything?   

(Decoupling from ideological norms; that's the modern terminology for not being conformed to this world. Disentanglement is another good description. So, how do we pursue that particular goal?)