ABSTRACT
Ideology, the system ofideas, values, and beliefs that shape the outlook of a person, a group, or a society, is a way oflooking at the world that gives comfort and satisfaction to its adherents. Ideology explains conditions and events to make sense of a person's or a people's experiences and aspirations. Ideology is an essential component of a nation's sense of identity. As a people's self-explanation and self-justification, its dominant ideology reflects social reality and rationalizes, and thereby reinforces, existing social relationships. If this were not so, there would be no dominant consensus in favor of existing arrangements, and either these arrangements would give way to alternatives that enjoyed greater public legitimacy, or ideas would change to accord more closely with the interests of dominant groups. Ideology and society are mutually reinforcing. So reciprocally conditioning and interrelated are social reality and ideology - reality and real interests creating ideology, ideology recreating social reality and reinforcing real interests - that it is often impossible to separate cause from effect.
