>>> So proper ideas are there to protect individuals, not to make the world more dangerous.
>>>The problem with that notion is that someone has to decide what ideas are proper.
>
>Which brings us back to your comments about ideologues. Self-certainty and hostility towards fools who don't accept one's version of the truth, is the cause of much of the trouble in the world. You only have to use the retrospectoscope on wars to figure out that millions of people have lost their lives and empires have risen and fallen because ideologues took a fixed position and often used some pretext to justify their intended course of action. Sometimes it helps to reflect on eternal truths such as "all is vanity" or the story of the mighty Ozymandias before embarking on a holy war over some fact du jour.
>
>I met a traveller from an antique land
>Who said: "Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
>Stand in the desert. Near them, on the sand,
>Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown,
>And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,
>Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
>Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
>The hand that mocked them and the heart that fed:
>And on the pedestal these words appear:
>'My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:
>Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!'
>Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
>Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare
>The lone and level sands stretch far away."

Sic transit Gloria Vanderbilt!