Tuesday, July 3, 2012

Truths that aren't (Econo)

The "truths" of economics are not truths, they're ideology. What do I mean by "ideology" exactly? The distinguishing characteristic of what I consider as "ideological" is that they (ideological tropes, melodies McCluhan-ite messages and Machiavellian massages) are subscribed to blindly, without the further investigation that would upgrade it from the label "ideology." I do not actually think that ideology is always all that bad but it is that the accepting subject evinces no further desire or will to dig that far, far enough to find out if such matters are true, which, in many cases, is simply a whole lot of work. So, the word "ideology," for me, has a broad range. It is a very interesting word and I've seen a few debates about it.
     There are many things like this. It is not even unusual. Therefore, although I definitely do say that, in economics, the "ideological" content should be considered dangerous and even nefarious, not to mention insincere, dishonest and malicious, sometimes also there are cases where these standard tropes and messages are rather innocent, not necessarily nefarious. I do not agree that this is the case for economics, as a field of enquiry in this society. 
     In the more prosaic case, ideology is just examples of ubiquitous elements inherent in any culture. In order to create a workable society there have to be these "cultural" elements, and thus to the word "ideology" there is a wide range, an ambivalent, even nonverbal area.

     All of this can be very closely tied into an analysis of capitalism, capitalism as society/culture, in terms of capitalism's ambiguity, etc. but, quite frankly, it's hard. That takes a lot of time and energy...maybe if somebody would pay me... No, really, I would like to explain it.

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