Althusser

Althusser's concept of how we are essentially trapped inside ideology summed up the basic cornerstone of the entire CMC major for me. This is the world we are living in because we made it this way-- our culture in every single aspect is an ideology... down to what I think is fact ties in directly to the world constructed around me. And that leaves me kind of depressed because I feel like everything, down to the 30 second advertisements on TV, are lies. It reminds me of the Matrix in a way that there is a layer underneath everything we see that is so far off from what we feel is real. It's hard to not be paranoid and search for the negative connotation behind all of the social constructs we've grown up around. AK wrote in their post about advertisements on TV and how if it's a home appliance its automatically geared towards women because home is where a woman is supposed to be. Even if I see a seemingly powerful woman in an ad (print or TV) there are three scenarios: she's either attractive, overly sexualized, or the stereotypical uptight spinster. Is the natural average woman so bad?? I don't think so, but at the same time the cultural ideology I've grown up with tells me that I'm probably not going to pay attention to average. This hegemonic control over the way our minds are shaped is SO important, and despite the hundreds of thousands of pages available with information drawing back the veil and screaming "LOOK AT THIS AND CHANGE IT" there is nothing to be done. Because wouldn't it be just another cycle of shifting reality? And who is to say that what is there is wrong, or what we think should be there is appropriate? It's overwhelming, and I think Althusser did a great job in explaining the dangers of the "cult of the new" and how we are obsessed with things that should be trivial (see.. even when I write that, isn't that mindset still in our ideology??). This idea that we must be passive because being active is labeled as "radical" is just a construct that's meant to stop us from questioning what's in place. But when it's so engrained, I'm left seriously asking myself.. what exactly can I do without being disregarded and othered?