sardine -- pre-10/31 Althusser

“it is not their real conditions of existence, their real world that’men’ ‘represent to themselves’ in ideology, but above all it is their relation to those conditions of existence which is represented to them there. It is this relation which is at the centre of every ideological, i.e. imaginary, representation of the real world. It is this relation that contains the ‘cause’ which has to explain the imaginary distortion of the ideological representation of the real world” (44)

I listen to my current neighbors discussing their political stance. And I warn my younger son not to swear and say bad things about the president. We have to live in this neighborhood and in this country. And I don’t want my politics out there. We live in the illusion of freedom and safety.

I grew up around Marxists. The FBI came to my house when I was a kid and asked my parents to “report on” the neighbors and our friends. And those friends and neighbors tried to get my parents to “join” the party. This was way back in the sixties, about twelve years after McCarthy. My parents declined both.

I too have learned to be anti-ism. I like and understand some of the ideas and mechanisms of the ideologies at large. Most, including myself, belong without comprehension. We subscribe. We are manipulated, and we manipulate others to join us in our consumption, our watching fox news, and in our bumper sticker relation to things at large in the world. We want approval. We want to be loved. We want to belong. And we want to know what it all means. Buying brand X, or belonging to a political party, or religion, or vegetarianism, are all forms of ideology. And we fear rejection. We fear being alone with our empty identities.

We are coerced and we look for our comfort zone where the bullshit doesn’t make us feel like hypocrites, at least too much. Then we can report on our neighbors for being Commies, Anarchists, and Liberals, etc. Our fears of being labeled make us point the finger. It is not me. It’s them.