Bella Post Class 3/6

In my understanding, an ideology is a set of ideas, practices or beliefs of a dominant group that permeate society and influence the public way of life. We have certain ideologies in our culture such the idea of The American Dream or that education is available for everyone. Last semester, I took a course specifically talking about our cultural ideologies, what they are, how they affect us, etc. It was by far one of the most thought provoking and “veil-lifitng” classes I’ve ever taken. As Althusser wrote, the cultural ideologies we have in society are created by the upper class, and no matter how deceiving, ultimately benefit the elite. Althusser wrote, “There is no practice except by and in an ideology” (Althusser 45). Everything that we see, do, hear, learn, any information or text that we receive is part of the ideological system created by the upper class.
One of the most interesting things we talked about in class today was comparing Marx’s binary oppositions of the American ruling class. Fast, slow, new, old, etc. I found it extremely interesting to hear the class’ preferences over each option. Fast v. slow was by far the most interesting for me. Someone said that our generation demands everything now, immediate, and I completely agree. I wonder, though, if my generation in other countries would feel the same way. Western culture, specifically American, has a unique obsession with time. I firmly believe that the one of the most powerful objects in the world is a clock. Americans are obsessed with time, with being late, with getting everything now. In Latin American countries, time is relative. “Island time” is a common term in the islands, and in many European countries, businesses close for several hours in the afternoon to give every a midday rest. For us, fast is better. For others, slow is the only way to go. I often wish that I lived in a culture that valued the slow lifestyle–we so often get wrapped up in our fast lives that we don’t take the time to appreciate the world around us, step away from the ideologies that form our culture and appreciate the simplicities of life. Maybe we should all take a lesson from Paris Hilton and Nicole Richie…just kidding.