I may have been responsible for a misunderstanding here. I’m using ideology in the critical theory sense that goes back to Marx (and I’m pretty confident @Baden is as well). Ideology in this sense refers to the ideas that justify the status quo (though not like an intentional deception or conspiracy but as an organic consequence of social relations). And by “dogma” I meant to indicate that these become difficult to question.
Such (dogmatic) ideologies are not often extreme. They are most often completely conventional and taken for granted. Here are some examples:
- The American Dream:
- The idea that anyone can succeed through hard work
- Makes inequality a matter of individual merit instead of structural advantage
- A fair day’s work for a fair day’s pay:
- The idea that the wage relation is a fair exchange between equals
- Hides the structural power imbalance between capital and labour
- Consumer choice = freedom:
- The idea that freedom, the most cherished social goal in all of history, is achieved with a wide selection of products
- Obscures the distinction between choosing a phone and genuine self-determination
- Connectivity = community:
- The idea that being permanently connected via phone, internet, and social media amounts to social belonging
- Obscures the way technology is being used to hamper, rather than advance, human flourishing
- Innovation = progress:
- The idea that new technology always counts as human advancement
- Foreclosing any assessment of whether a technology serves us or subordinates us to its own expansion
The first two are classic examples, the others are more relevant to @Baden’s concerns.
When Adorno recommended “blasting open individual phenomena through the insistent power of thought,” he was referring to ideological artifacts: today, examples are smartphones, like buttons (we even have them on TPF), subscriptions to online services (permanent rentals). These can be analyzed to reveal their ideological functions, i.e., the way they reinforce existing relations of power by presenting themselves as natural, as neutral and beneficial tools.