Hebdidge

“Ideology saturates everyday discourse in the form of common sense”. If you think about this quote by Hebdige, it truly makes a lot of sense. Ideology is flawed in the sense that it is not applicable to everyone in every situation, and is constructed in certain ways. Common sense in the same way is flawed, because it is not necessarily true, but is widespread and assumed to be common understanding. Lets take the ideology of opportunity for example, in reference to the American dream. This is a false ideology, but it is common sense around the globe that the United States is the land of opportunity. How is such a message so misconstrued and believed falsely by so many people? In reality it is a myth, the ideology of equal opportunity in the United States is 110% myth. The ideals of equality and acceptance play the exact same way in this country, they are seen as common sense by much of the world, however those ideologies are false. Another aspect of this concept is the Things that go ‘unsaid’. Common sense often goes unsaid because it is in fact not real, but to question it would be to question widespread assumption, and furthermore order. For instance, in Winter Park people say don’t travel between New York Ave/Morse/17-92 at night. Why? Cause it labels “the other side of the tracks”? Because the people who live there aren’t wealthy, and the majority are African American so it must be dangerous? This is something that I’ve seen go unsaid, and is looked at as common sense, but is as far as I know a complete myth. This comes back to a fundamental issue in our society, and that is that people believe everything they hear to be truth. Ignorance sucks.