Ideology narrows what a man can see. Willingly, the strange part. The field of view reduced by the one doing the looking. One lens. One answer that explains everything. The hammer that sees nothing but nails. Scheuklappen, and the horse wears them because they keep him calm.
Nobody handed you an opinion. You were handed a subject, and the opinion grew there by itself. It needs no conspiracy. A single lens is free, it is sociable, it arrives with people who nod. So the borrowed answer stops feeling borrowed and starts feeling like common sense, which is the oldest glamour there is. A spell that makes you see what is not in the room.
And you will defend it. The people a system costs the most are often the ones who defend it hardest. Uncertainty frightens more than unfairness. A wrong map beats no map, every time.
So push your beliefs aside. Abstract. It is not about you. Remove yourself from the equation and start on a blank canvas. What are the facts? The method is not clever. One question, asked until it stops giving new answers. What is this made of? You have reached the bottom when the explanation no longer needs the words they and somehow.
Go under the skin. Peel the layers. First the atom. Then subatomic particles. Then quarks. Then strings, vibrations, in and out of existence. No need to go metaphysical. We do have to pull the wool off our eyes. Noise. Smoke grenades. Flash bangs. You cannot step outside and watch. You are part of the instrument, which is exactly why the lens comes off first. Name the actors. Name what each can do to the other. Reduction to essence, which is why 499 words are enough.
Now try it. Ask why your wage has not moved. You will be handed a list. Foreigners. Refugees. Pensioners. The ones who do not work, whatever the reason. The billionaire is not on the list, because he is an abstraction. The man in the German car on your street is not. That is living in duality. When the last union with teeth strikes, other workers do not stand beside them. They resent the rise. Losers keep losing, and the list explains why that must be somebody else's fault. Strip it away and the fact underneath is dull. Your wage is what your bargaining power can command, and your bargaining power was taken apart while you read the list.
It costs. Decades, and it is not a qualification. Nobody will pay you for it. The man with one lens has his answer before your question has finished, and a room rewards certainty. You lose the people who agreed with you. When you are wrong you are wrong alone, with nothing left to blame. What it buys is this. You see it coming. You are no cleverer. You stopped looking where you were pointed. Somebody pulled it over your eyes. Nobody else can pull it off for you.