Blog #2 Marx Ideology

The small group I was in during class focused on Karl Marx's thoughts of ideology, which struck me as the most interesting. We found that ideology means a system of ideas which in a way keeps social order. Ideas come from people. Power shapes the ideas that people form. It appears that people from higher classes create these ideologies and enforce them to keep control of lower classes. Ideas formed can create social order by giving a pathway for people to follow, and have and idea of what is considered to be socially acceptable and create norms. Even though it seems good that there is some sort of social order, Marx thinks it could also have negative effects because it gives people a false sense of reality that is obscured.

When we describe the function of ideologies, Marx uses the metaphor "camera obscura," meaning reality (the image) is turned on its head. He says that ideology reflects an inverted image of social reality that is false and distorted. It's true that the image is still there, but it isn't being portrayed or gone about in the best possible way. Even if the ideas aren't being portrayed correctly or in the most efficient way, they will continue to stick if the majority or people of power say so. The way each person lives their lives are going to create different ideas based on their experiences and connections, yet these ideas can get mixed up and confused.

I think these views Karl Marx expresses are still relevant today. We talk about a 2 class system in class, and even though we have grown from that, ideologies still to me seem to be a tool of power against lower classes. I do think that certain ideas all over the world could be distorted without us really realizing it because it has been normalized. Below I have an image of "camera obscura" and how reality (the candle) is manipulated by ideologies and views of the powerful (slot B) and in turn flips the original reality upside down to be something totally different and obscured.