Let's certainly hope so. Problem Solving > Ideology.
The world is far too complex for a simple set of rules (Ideology) to be capable of providing all the answers to all the problems.
The simplest cell in the human body is unimaginably complex - why would the rules governing the interaction of billions of humans comprised of billions of those cells be simple?
That is the problem, ideologies are more about story telling (narratives) than modeling the world. You need a hero, villan and a great problem. Ideologies are often not good at solving the "great problem" since they often have really naive model of the problem (see Communism/Capitalism/Libertarianism/Fascism/Democracy/Anarchism) but they are extremely useful. They can bring people together and bridge divides of culture and religion (and create new divisions and hatreds). They can inspire us to work toward a grand project. They can manifest changes that never would have been possible.
I believe one of the reasons that large scale innovation was greater in the mid 20th Century than in the late 20th Century was the death of ideology but also one of the reasons that the late 20th Century and early 21th Century has been so peaceful.
The mid to late 20th Century was largely about the contest of ideologies. While there may not have been as much mass bloodshed, it was no more peaceful. Proxy wars were fought across pretty much the entire globe. Other conflicts also erupted in areas that were not defined by the Cold War, but their own local Ideological differences.
I think some of this talk about ideologies is throwing the baby out with the bath water. Abstracting your worldview so that you can better explain yourself to others should not be looked down upon. That is how you will ultimately come to better compromise when it possible. You can't solve problems without ideas.
Ideologies are harmful when you take some text some Russian wrote years ago and try to bend the world to match that text. When you define your own worldview and don't rely only on the words of a dead guy that isn't there to clarify things, then you get into trouble.
No, it is a very serious problem when your Ideology can provide a single correct answer to every single problem, regardless of the actual facts related to that problem.
The scale and ambitions of wars today are much smaller which is in essence what you are saying and it is a really important point. We are living in a time of extremely limited war that in comparison with the mid 20th Century is a time of relative peace (the mid 20th Century being one of the most bloody in human history). This graph makes this point better than I:
>think some of this talk about ideologies is throwing the baby out with the bath water. Abstracting your worldview so that you can better explain yourself to others should not be looked down upon.
Agreed, and for the record I'm not against ideology or story telling in general. It is what humans do to make sense of their role in the world. It is interesting to me that we live in a time of old dying ideologies and it skews our perspective about the future since long term these treads have never lasted. For example the The_End_of_History(tm) claim that was getting some traction in the 1990s. What will come next?
Yes, the scale of wars has not been on the multinational "total war" level the last half century, but it is hardly been peaceful. Just more along historical norms pre-World Wars. That is normally true of wars following more encompassing conflicts.
Ideology played just as large of a driving force during the second half of the 20th Century yet the bloodshed was less. It is hard to say that withdraw from Ideology equals greater peace.
The world is far too complex for a simple set of rules (Ideology) to be capable of providing all the answers to all the problems.
The simplest cell in the human body is unimaginably complex - why would the rules governing the interaction of billions of humans comprised of billions of those cells be simple?