Ideology: Superior To Relationships

Maybe you've heard someone say that things like religion and politics are not worth ending relationships over.  But what if someone believes in a religion that requires torturing people grotesquely every day?  What if someone believes in a political idea that calls for class-based genocide?  The people who say worldviews are not important enough to dissolve a friendship over probably wouldn't even act consistently with their own claim if they, for instance, met an actual Nazi, someone who thinks he or she is a deity and demands worship, a hyper-sexist person, or someone who believes that people should be executed for having black hair.  I have yet to meet someone who actually says these things would not lead them to break a friendship, or perhaps not persuade them to avoid starting one to begin with.

Sometimes a few questions can expose just how insincere or unintelligent someone truly is!  Philosophy, religion, and politics (the latter two being only subsets of the first) are the most important issues one could ever talk about, reflect on, or live for.  It follows that they are the most important things a friendship could be founded upon.  Am I saying that it is wrong to be friends with someone who has a different worldview?  Not at all!  I am only pointing out the stupidity of saying that worldviews are too trivial to put above human relationships.

The fact that people, when holding relationships above ideology, don't think about what actually follows from their own beliefs demonstrates that their intellects are deficient, that their lives are not oriented around the pursuit of truth, or both.  Only a sophist or someone who does not desire reality over fulfillment of subjective would ever say that something like a worldview difference is too minor to end a friendship over, because worldview differences are some of the only things that could be worth disrupting a friendship for.  Only someone undeserving of being treated as intelligent or committed to truth would ever say otherwise.  It is unjust to treat someone as if they are what they are not.

Epistemology, ethics, religion, politics--these (and other related things) are not just some of the most important things one could ever contemplate, but they are also among the only things that could be meaningful.  It is not even logically possible for arbitrary, subjective matters of taste to be objectively meaningful in themselves, but reality itself is meaningful depending on a variety of its features (if there is a God, if that deity has a moral nature, etc).  I do not know why some people do not care about ultimately knowing reality, but they can only live for meaningless things if they do not.

I have lost friendships, long-standing and minor, over ideology, and if I could sacrifice these friendships on the altar of pursuit of truth, I would do so again without hesitation.  And I would not do so with a reluctant spirit, for happiness would fill my heart.  No human relationship can be worth more than reality.