Each Mythology Is Always Ideological
We are what we have bought and what we are using or wearing. We cannot define ourselves solely without heeding where we live and what products we use since we are residing in the mythical environment, on the mythological earth, displaying a single manipulative reality — in which there are many things we prey and at once they prey us — which is by force the entire time infused into our mind by dint of our sense perception by which we not only perceive what they are displaying, but also unconsciously absorb them as our normal reality.
It has been irrefutable that at present we are living amongst myths spreading around and throng around to permeate themselves into our consciousness and lifestyle — and yet subsequently our lifestyles are none other than the myths themselves. Semiotically, the language-object in which we use as the primary tool of our communication every day has no longer been the objective language which can directly designate the reality where we dwell in view of the fact that the language-object has been disguised by the existence of the myths.
As stated by semioticians, our language operates in signification, and each sign always has two entities, signifier and signified, by which human beings consistently communicate one another and perceive reality. Regrettably, the system of signification (in the first level as denotative meaning) can be stolen by the second level where myths can appear to take over it. In this condition, we feel powerless to construe the second level where myths reside. Certainly, myths are fabricated fully wilfully to serve our need and yet direct what we should or must need.
Although looking at a cursory glance what myths are exhibiting, and supposing ourselves not affected, we cannot by any means repulse it since once we have seen at a glance the myths, they can permeate into our unconsciousness which in the next days we are going to realize. We can for awhile recheck what we have now, afterwards we will be able to realize that all stuff we have in each corner of our house is a sort of our consciousness which has embodied into our consciousness, all of which we bought and keep having because of what the myths have told and dictated.
Indeed, we cannot elude the myths because too late to feel powerless and surrounded massively. Here we have to be outspoken to state that every myth is ideological. I want to make “ideological” unambiguous, that “ideological” here, as Althusser asserts, is that the myths “interpellate individual as subject”. We, each of us is a full subject, are made vulnerable to being able to be consistent to grip our subjectivity, so that in that vulnerable moment there is a thing which can fulfil our vulnerability and define what and who we are. It is remarkably perspicuous that myths have a significant role in ostensibly “our normal reality”.
As a matter of fact, our normal reality is none other than our “normalised” reality. Here, we should be aware of the functions of the myths, one of which is “normalisation of concept”. In this context, “concept” is signified in the first level brought and elevated to the second level where myths are fabricated. Concept where our reference designates becomes unsteady because having taken over by the second level of signification. It has been perspicuous enough that our denotation and signification as well as connotation are conquered by the owners of the myths by means of their fabrication of the signification.
Our reality is not normal or not natural itself, but it is naturalised by concept fabricating built-in meaning. The “built-in meaning” is a place which myths reside to consistently compel us to comply with what they utter, so that our natural reality is taken over by the myths to dictate that our natural reality is not so natural as a reality which they form is. In other words, each myth functions to more naturalise our fixed concept, meaning that what we have conceptualised has to be repositioned because of the doctrine of the myths — in addition to our vulnerability to defining and keeping gripping our subjectivity — voicing that what is natural is merely what they dictate. Absolutely, here we can apprehend the dictatorship of the myths broadcasting a single truth which is at the moment surrounding us.
Then, what is the ideology of the myths?