Conjecture

Ideology changed the question a binding story must answer, from "does this come from the top?" to "will this work?", which makes the story testable in practice and therefore breakable by its own results. Ansary, ch. 24: "Ideologies are blueprints for social interaction colored by the logic of the machine"; "In a world defined by religion and kinship, the first question raised by every rule was, how do we know this comes from the top? In a world defined by ideology, the first question was, how do we know this rule will work?"; "An ideology must convince people its dicta would, in fact, improve human life on earth"; "Every ideology runs into contradictions in practice"; by mid-century "ideologies were out-competing kinship and religion as sources of social cohesion." That a collective which binds by "will it work" must keep a public record of whether it did, or it is asking for faith under an engineering banner, is Leo's step.

How groups think together