I found the discussion in class on Monday extremely interesting: I had never thought that the concept of ideology would be separated into two distinct sectors.  Prescriptive ideology seemed to be the more interesting of the two, considering its bias and misrepresentations.  As we talked about, providing a false understanding of information to the public in order to persuade them to think a certain way seems all too relevant for our culture.  Ideas of propaganda and mass media misrepresentations are present today, and people seem to be more aware of social misconceptions.  There are the over-zealous conspiracy theorists who make it their hobby–or, for some, their job–to obsess over the influence of the media or the government.  Then, of course, there is also the uninformed or ignorant sector of society who go along with these misrepresentations and feed the media’s ability to misconstrue the truth.  I suppose I am so fascinated with the idea of false ideology because of the well-known dystopia by George Orwell, 1984.  His representation of the totalitarian society seems like a not-too-distant possibility for the future, especially if the public remains uninformed.

With regards to prescriptive ideology, I believe that it is almost impossible to have a society unaffected by a twist of the truth.  The absolute truth cannot be administered at all times, and one cause of the misconception is the individual’s (or subject’s) tendency to prescribe their own feelings or thoughts onto a situation, event, person, etc.  Unless a society existed in which no one had opinions, the inevitable truth about perspective ideology seems to be that it is unavoidable.  That isn’t to say that it can be controlled to a certain degree and preventive measures such as increased and less-biased education/information; however, the difficulty of completing this task is immense–especially due to the amount of ignorant civilians.