THEORY OF IDEOLOGY:
A CRITICAL ANALYSIS OF OUR IMPOSED COLLECTIVE MIND
Values, ideas, opinions, beliefs… don’t just naturally exist, for certain people at particular places and times, without being caused to exist. Empirically they are selected and imposed via institutions, on the basis of a history, by one or another dominant group. They are distributed, valorized, affirmed and repeated by physical and institutional means (media and the press, schools, churches, workplaces, etc.).
But it is also possible to define our own terms and values. Especially since values, for a person with integrity, are deeply involved in the determination of action, this seems extremely important. And since so many of us are convinced that no life but this one, no values but the ones in the media, no social structure but the one we’re given, are possible… we will conclude by working our way through many instances of groups working to determine their own values—especially seeking to say for themselves what things like “freedom,” “democracy,” and “happiness” mean—as a part of a project of taking back their own action and their own space.