Book Review: IDEOLOGY AND CIVILITY:

IDEOLOGY AND CIVILITY: By EDWARD SHILS 
This book is trying to show, how ideology invaded public life, paralyzed the free dialectic of intellectual life, and in politics, constricted or broke the flexible consensus necessary for an orderly state. Movements like Italian Fascism, German National Socialism, and Russian Bolshevism, begins its journey from such cicumstances, the book says.
Ideology attracts people in their childhood, but to which adults are practically immune, who constantly is on the lookout for something new. There seems to be no fresh alternative to ideology, both to absorb all their devotion, and inflame their capacity for faith and their aspirations toward perfection. A conservative revival is on, though moderate. The crucial element that propels all this, as the book says, is the creation of a class of intellectuals no longer dependent exclusively on patronage or inheritance. People with sensibility, intelligence, and imagination much beyond the standards and requirements of everyday life. Such people found solace in ideology, and fresh thoughts constantly occur.
New ideas, and the clash of those, kept coming, leading to the birth of civil societies that kept enriching itself. Much of the earlier ideals seem slowly to be yielding to the rising tide of civility, an essential need of a healthy society of these days. And the book concludes by asking this question - won't the preponderance of civility bring the age of ideology to an end? 
I liked the book a lot. It narrates the role played by differing ideologies, while pointing out the part played by the killer of ideologies - civility. Ideology propels growth, growth brings civility, and civility puts and end to ideology by accommodating all of it - Lenz's law of ideology? 
As I mentioned in my books, ideology originated from our need to fill 'gaps' that existed in social transactions of the early times. (An Idea is an aggregate of the bits and pieces of thoughts we use for filling voids!) As time go by, much of the 'gaps' are being filled by the inventions, discoveries, or the accompanying social changes, we constantly witness. Ideology will have no role to play, if civility triumphs. And it can very well be so, if the the fruits of modern science reaches all corners of the world.