10/26 Reflection Marx

Boy, where to even start with this post after all of last weeks discussions!
It felt sort of like this meme...

(^Please excuse language) Except for... what is real? And how can we even begin to know what the "real world" is?

After talking about Karl Marx and his theory on ideology, I am stuck on this idea of reality and what ideologies do to said "reality". Like Marx points out, and the above meme reflects, most of us are simply coasting through life following and adhering to the social constructions around us because we have never been told to think critically about the life we are living. I don't know many people who see the world the way I do, and quite honestly, I don't believe I would see the world this way without being a CMC major. Many are not conscious in every day life. Most people within the greater American culture have accepted ideologies that have been created to reinforce and contribute to the social constructions of a class system at an unconscious or subconscious level. Because we live in a society that is heavily reliant on an economic class structure, ideologies become sort of a tool of power, or are used as manipulation by those in the ruling, or upper class. So at the end of the day we are all scurring around and rushing through life doing what we believe we are supposed to do, acting the way we believe we should be and are acting the way that has been socially constructed and defined as right, for us. We are not the creators of our own lives, as we were told and taught in kindergarten. No, we are the product of a cycle, a cycle that is rarely challenged and rarely questioned for its roots.

You see, American culture is a society in which equality, and reality, do not really exist. For if all actions, decisions, reasons and explanations are based on this system of ideologies, well then, how can one escape what has been set as president before him, and how then can we begin to call this reality?

At the end of the week, I leave this class once more feeling as though reality is not and never will be a "reality". Ha Ha. Get it? Because we still don't know what reality is! Therefore, reality is not definable, nor is it something we can claim to know. What is real? And when will others start to wonder this too?