ponderous

The problem, Althusser suggests, is that we don’t notice the forms in which our lives are constructed. Society functions as something obvious, something given, almost natural.
In order to understand the hidden imperatives, the codes of being, the secret requirements that philosophers call ‘ideologies’, we need to remove the veil of obviousness and givenness. Only then do we notice the bizarre but highly ordered logic that we obey, unthinkingly, in our everyday lives.
We may well feel ourselves opposed to ‘society’ or the ‘status quo’: however, paradoxically, for a particular ideology to survive, it is not essential that people actively support or believe in it.
The crucial thing is that people do not express their disbelief. For them to abide by the majority opinion, all that matters is that they believe it to be true that most of the people around them believe.
Ideologies thus thrive on ‘belief in the belief of others’.
- Choice, ‘Intro,’ p. 10, Renata Salecl, 2010