All humans simply have to have some kind of higher objectives or goals in life to remain sane in the long run. I for my part believe in things like freedom, equality and supporting those who cannot support themselves. These basic beliefs do easily translate into a political stance, and I did really have one when I was younger.
Now I have for a long time avoided binding myself to any given political ideology or movement. Instead I try to support all such ideas ideas that can benefit my own society or preferably the whole of humanity.

This approach is naturally much more difficult than simply throwing yourself to a movement and letting go. You need constantly to pick and choose things to support based on your own life-experience and knowledge. Thing can then be selected on their own merits and not just because they are supported by an ideology or its representatives.
I venture to say this, even if it admittedly sounds quite preposterous. I also freely admit that it is of course a quite unattainable goal to be not restricted by the ideas that one does already have. On the other hand there simply must also be unattainable goals in life.

The movement towards a worthwhile goal can be simply even more important than ever attaining it. The most important goals in human endeavor just could be thiose that they can really never be reached.
Of course, the method of looking at individual issues at their own merits will quite inevitably lead very often into a situation where one is left to be in a party of one.

A person who defines himself with aid of s strict ideology will inevitably end up in different positions in many issues than a person who does not have such ideological restrictions. A simple fact of life is that people who have even extremely similar basic ideas and life-stance can end up in different corners on individual issues.
This can happen also if the other person does look at the issue at hand from the perspective of an ideology only and the other person does not have this limitation.

Wikipedia

It is quite true that the very basic values in life are always some kinds of beliefs. There is no real hard objective way to form and evaluate the very basic values that humans do honor. However, one can rather objectively observe how using different sets of values has in the real world affected the world in the past and how different sets of values have benefited humanity compared to other sets of values.
There is always the question of what is deemed useful and what not. We easily end up in a circle, as these things are so often decided according to the values we already have.

So, a really objective way of evaluating human values could be only a pipe dream. But if we get stuck to that point, we can end up accepting things just as they are claimed to be, without even trying to analyze them objectively.
Even if also full and complete objectiveness is unattainable in the real world, the will to strive for even a semblance of it can still be a very important goal in itself.

The feelings of compassion, pity and solidarity towards other humans are embedded deeply in our genes. Those feelings have not been invented by religions or any other ideology, for that matter.
All ideologies use these deep and universal human emotions to their own advantage. However, I believe that when one is using emotions like compassion, pity and solidarity as even principal guides in one’s life one can never go really wrong.

(This piece was completely refurbished on the 11th of May, 2012)