Role of ideology in social and political development (extremism and pacifism)

Abstract

Throughout human history, there has never been a single line of organisation of society. The implementation of different ideas has always been carried out as a project developed because of the real needs of people. Numerous projects have become established and continued to the present day. However, a lot of them degenerated and changed the image of the world in such a way that they became the cause of conflicts. There has also been fragmentation in the implementation of human desire for peace but also desires for rebellion and rejection of inherited cultural or political patterns. We chose pacifism and extremism to compare two forms of the image of the world throughout history. Pacifism is one of the few movements or ideologies which tolerates any national, religious, cultural, or identity-building diversity, and as such, automatically becomes the opposite of extremism, which in its essence either negates or completely denies diversity or plurality. The primary aim of this article is to analyse the mottos of pacifism, to emphasise the universality of its principles as one of the possible defence mechanisms against the spread of aggressive, polarised, and militant tendencies which jeopardise individual societies, and to point out the potential of mutual influence between the constructs so diverse as pacifism and extremism.