Ideology and learnign that 'He's Just Not That Into You'

Last night I went to the new movie “He’s Just Not That Into you”. I won’t give away too much of the plot if you haven’t seen the movie, but I’ll give a general overview. The movie begins with a 5 year old girl named Gigi who is pushed and made fun of by a boy her age. To console her, Gigi’s mother tells her that line we’ve all heard before. He’s mean to you because he likes you. We’ve all heard it, seen it portrayed in movies and TV shows; we may even have believed or hoped it was true in our own lives. But years later Gigi has to come to terms with the fact that sometimes if a guy is mean to you, doesn’t call you back, or doesn’t seem to notice you, he’s just not interested. He’s not too intimidated, he doesn’t think you’re too good for him and he did not lose your number or get hit by a taxi. Yet we are all fed this line at one point or another, or ones like it. We are told things that make us feel better about ourselves, we hear stories that are the exception, but we take them to be the rule. Why? Why do we continue to listen to these types of idealistic sayings and stories that often never come true?
Think about it. All of those romance novels and chick flicks depict fairy tale like circumstances that have just the right amount of drama but always end the way everyone knows they should (and will). That is not real life. Most of the time relationships don’t work out as picture perfectly as movies and books depict. Yet we continue to read them and buy them and dream of our own prince charming who will come sweep us off our feet in the perfect way. Or look at music. Songs like Love Story by Taylor Swift, where the guy is super romantic and the girl is swept off her feet by the perfect worlds, teach us the same things about life. Things that are nice, and do sometimes happen, but are not the norm.
And it’s not just romance that is romanticized (ha!). Look at movies and books in general. Though the main characters may go through some rough patches and so on, the good guys almost always come out on top. But that is not how life always works. Sometimes the bad guy wins. Sometimes bad things happen to good people. Life does not always work the way we think it should.
As I was thinking about the movie (and other cultural influences) today I realized that that is what Jeff and Susan talk about in there chapter on Ideology in The Theory toolbox. In the chapter ideology is defined as “something that’s false or misleading because it’s mystifying.” It is an idea or thought or concept that sugar coats truth if you will. It tries to make whatever situation seem better or more positive. So if a guy doesn’t call you, he lost your number. If he’s mean to you, it’s because he likes you and wants to get your attention. We say these to our friends and ourselves because we want to believe them. They are much happier than the alternative option. But they are not (often) true.
But is this bad? Is it bad to be ideological? I don’t think so. To a point at least. At the risk of sounding like a broken record, I believe that it is about balance. I think it can be very harmful to live in a constant state of ideological thinking. It creates a delusional perception of reality that is probably not healthy to walk through life with. It seems like almost too far to fall from, and I believe a firm grasp on reality is healthy. As Fyodor Dostoevsky said, “For, after all, you do grow up, you do outgrow your ideals, which turn to dust and ashes, which are shattered into fragments; and if you have no other life, you just have to build one up out of these fragments. And all the time your soul is craving and longing for something else.” However what is wrong with seeing the best in people and the world and focusing on that. What is wrong with being hopeful, even if what you hope for is a long shot? There is nothing wrong with hoping. For as Emma Goldman once said, “Idealists...foolish enough to throw caution to the winds...have advanced mankind and have enriched the world.” We need a balance of reality and hopeful ideology, faith and reason, fear and courage in order to be truly successful.