Nate Dogg, Marx/Engels & Althusser

"Ideology represents the imaginary relationship of individuals to their real conditions of existence....it is not that 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." (Althusser, 44)

Individuals use ideology to help explain their reactions to experiences that occur in the real world. We like to be able to associate things with one another. Our brain is naturally trained to make billions of possible connections to anything at anytime, so it makes sense that we should do so. The problem is that ideology is not real, only a projection of specified traits and objectives, and we like to associate ourselves with ideals and beliefs that befit our personalities.

ISAs exploit this by using individual ideology as a means of control, to gain profit, gain support for a cause, etc. We subconciously make connections, and people understand that this can be toyed with in order to deceive and convince. It becomes extremely important when we look at communications. The internet, television and radio exist only because there is money to be made from advertising. We have to look at what we are associating ourselves with carefully, because those ideologies are not real. When an ad for General Electric comes on during a football game, we don't associate GE with building and testing nuclear weapons, we associate GE with appliances, lights bulbs, power bills. We don't make that connection because what we see and hear does not reflect reality. The image of the cheery, friendly and most importantly, American company is only a projection carefully designed in order to convince you of everything but the truth.