Concept in Definition ABC

Ideology is defined as a set of individual, group or social beliefs and ideas that determine the possessing subject and that place it in the existing reality in a particular way. Although on the one hand an ideology is understood as a way of think individual in which different preferences, choices, beliefs and ideas are present, can also be understood as the system of ideas of a social group that is expressed through him in the whole social whole.

The ideology can seek three main and well differentiated objectives: to maintain the existing reality (they will be those ideologies that seek conserve the system or 'conservative'), return to previous realities (ideologies that are known as 'reactionary' since they imply a change but in retrogression) or transform reality in a progressive or revolutionary way towards new social forms (these are revolutionary ideologies or reformists).

Ideologies can in turn be of different types: political, cultural, economic, social, moral, institutional or religious, giving sometimes coincidences between different types of them, for example between some political and economic ideologies or between religious ideologies and morals. Unlike the notion of worldview (which represents the total set of a society or

civilization) that of ideology always implies belonging to a certain group of people that faces another by nature. In most cases, ideology implies a certain dogmatism precisely because of this opposition to systems of thought. different and it is here where some ideologies throughout history have gone from a simple dogmatism to a profound totalitarianism.

Some of the ideology examples best known to us today are liberalism, nationalism, socialism, communism, fascism, anarchism and conservationism (at the political level); feminism, environmentalist ideologies, anti-globalization, by equality racial and sexual, for the freedom of thought and pacifism (at the social and cultural level); Christianity, Judaism or Buddhism among others (on a religious level).

Topics in Ideology