Human beings are subjected to conditioning and alienation from birth that hinders their progress. Through institutions like family, school, church and media, dominant ideologies are instilled in people through repetition of slogans and symbols akin to Ivan Pavlov's theory of conditioned reflexes. This leads to social, economic and intellectual alienation as people do not recognize themselves as agents or creators of reality. The Ideological State Apparatus, comprising institutions like education, religion and media, works to reproduce the relations of capitalist exploitation and ruling class ideology. Overcoming conditioning and alienation is necessary for humanity to advance.

1. ALIENATION OF HUMAN BEINGS: BIG OBSTACLES TO PROGRESS OF
MANKIND
Fernando Alcoforado *
Since his birth in the family environment, past the school, the church, the university and
society in general all human beings suffer real "brainwashing" conditional to the
dominant ideology. In the late nineteenth century and early twentieth century, a Russian
physiologist named Ivan Pavlov (1849-1936), studying the physiology of the
gastrointestinal system, made one of the greatest scientific discoveries of our time: the
conditioned reflex. It was one of the first truly objective and scientific approach to the
study of learning, mainly because it provided a model that could be found and exploited
in countless ways, using the methodology of physiology. Pavlov thus inaugurated the
scientific psychology, coupling it neurophysiology. For his work he received the Nobel
Prize in Medicine and Physiology in 1904.
Pavlov was the one who discovered the so-called conditioned reflex which proves to be
a bodily response according to the stimulus received. With humans the conditioning
process is even more critical due to language and culture. According to Pavlov, animals
exist only what he called the first system of signs of reality. These are the systems of the
brain that receive and analyze stimuli that come from outside and within the body (eg ,
sounds, lights, CO2 level in the blood, bowel movements etc.). In humans, besides this
first addition signal system, there is a second system, language, which increases the
possibilities of conditioning. For humans, the word may be as real stimulus, as effective
as able to mobilize as any specific stimulus, and sometimes even more. Moreover, the
fact that the word is symbolic, being an abstraction, allows the conditioned stimulus is
generalizable.
The mechanisms of the conditioned reflex quickly switched to the field of politics and
also advertising. When we have a slogan, that is repeated constantly have Pavlov 's
theory put into practice. Generally, in political propaganda, there is a keyword, an idea force, which is repeated again and again in order to penetrate the subconscious of the
listeners. The same applies to commercial advertising: when they want to sell a product,
they are releasing stimuli of various hues: color, sound, etc. famous artist. Religion is
lavish in this mister. There is fasting, the punishment by flogging of meat or physical
discomfort, regulation of breathing, the revelation of terrible mysteries, the drumming,
the dances, the songs, panic, incense and drugs. Amid these postures, there are several
slogans in order to reach more emotion than reason. Note the religious conversion that
did change suddenly, via brainwashing of salvation by the works, for salvation by faith
alone. In practical terms, is to move from Catholic to Protestant.
According Marilena Chaui there is three forms of alienation: 1) social alienation ; 2)
economic alienation, and , 3) intellectual alienation. With social alienation, humans do
not recognize themselves as producers of sociopolitical institutions and oscillate
between two attitudes: either passively accept everything that exists, to be seen as
natural, divine or rational, or rebel individually, thinking that on its own will and
intelligence, may more than the reality that affects them. In both cases, society is
another (alienus), something external to us, separated from us, other than us and with
full power or no power over us. With the economic alienation, producers do not
recognize themselves as producers or recognize the objects produced by their work. In
our modern societies, economic alienation is twofold: Firstly , the workers, such as
social class, sell their labor power to the owners of capital (landowners, industries,
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2. commerce, banks, schools, hospitals, fleets of cars, buses or airplanes, etc.). However,
workers do not realize they have been reduced to the status of things making things; do
not realize they have been dehumanized and objectified.
The intellectual alienation results from the social separation between work stuff (which
produces goods) and intellectual work (producing ideas). The social division between
the two types of work suggests that the material work is a task that requires knowledge,
but only manual skills, while the intellectual work is solely responsible for the
knowledge. Living in a disposable society, intellectuals also alienated because they
forget or ignore that their ideas are connected to the opinions and viewpoints of the
class to which they belong, ie the ruling class, and imagine instead that ideas are
universal, valid for all, in all times and places. Marilena Chaui asks why humans do not
recognize themselves as social, political, historical, as agents and creators of reality in
which they live? The existence of the Ideological State Apparatus explains the social,
economic and intellectual alienation that dominates humanity and impedes your
progress.
According to Althusser's Ideological State Apparatus designate realities that present
themselves in the form of distinct and specialized institutions such as religious (the
system of the different Churches), the school (the system of the different public and
private schools), the family, the legal, political (political system , the different Parties);
cultural union (. Humanities, Fine Arts , sports, etc.) and information (press, radio,
television, etc.). The Ideological State Apparatus act alongside the apparatus
(repressive) State with the objective of maintaining the interests of the ruling classes.
Although different, constantly combine their forces. Despite its scattered appearance,
the Ideological State Apparatuses all work predominantly through ideology, which is
unified under the ideology of the ruling class. So, in addition to holding state power
and, consequently, have the apparatus (repressive ) state, the ruling class is also active
in the Ideological State Apparatuses. No class can lastingly hold state power without
exercising its hegemony over and Ideological State Apparatuses simultaneously. All
Ideological State Apparatus competes - the way each of its own - for the same purpose,
which is the reproduction of the relations of production, ie , the relations of capitalist
exploitation .
In the past, the number of Ideological State Apparatuses was greater, with the dominant
Church since the Roman Empire under Constantine to the Renaissance, gathering,
school, religious functions of information and culture. The French Revolution resulted
not only in the transfer of state power to the commercial capitalist bourgeoisie, also
resulting in the attack on the Ideological State Apparatus number one - the Church replaced its dominant role in the school Ideological State Apparatus. The school takes
care of children from all social classes from an early age, instilling in them the
knowledge contained within the dominant ideology (the mother tongue, literature,
mathematics, science, history) or simply the dominant ideology in pure stage (moral,
civic education, philosophy). And no other Ideological State Apparatus has a mandatory
hearing for so long ( 6h/5dias per week) and for so many years - precisely the period in
which the individual is most vulnerable, being squeezed between the Ideological State
Apparatus family Apparatus and Ideological State school. According to Althusser, there
are very few teachers who are against the ideology, against the system and against
practices that imprison. Most do not even suspect that the system of work requires them
to do. They ask so little that by devoting itself contribute to maintaining and nurturing
this ideological representation of the school, which today is the school something as
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3. natural and essential as was the Church in the past. For Althusser, the role of education
and its operations are determined elsewhere in the economic base of society.
The reality is that from birth to adulthood we adopted beliefs, opinions, ideas without
knowing where they came, without thinking about its causes and motives, without
evaluating whether they are consistent and true. Speak, act, think, have behaviors and
practices that seem perfectly natural and rational society because the repeats, accepting,
instills in us by the family, the school, the books, the media, for labor relations, by
political practices. The social, economic and intellectual disposition must be overcome
for humanity to follow the path of progress.
*
Alcoforado, Fernando, engineer and doctor of Territorial Planning and Regional Development from the
University of Barcelona, a university professor and consultant in strategic planning, business planning,
regional planning and planning of energy systems, is the author of Globalização (Editora Nobel, São
Paulo, 1997), De Collor a FHC- O Brasil e a Nova (Des)ordem Mundial (Editora Nobel, São Paulo,
1998), Um Projeto para o Brasil (Editora Nobel, São Paulo, 2000), Os condicionantes do
desenvolvimento do Estado da Bahia (Tese de doutorado. Universidade de Barcelona,
http://www.tesisenred.net/handle/10803/1944, 2003), Globalização e Desenvolvimento (Editora Nobel,
São Paulo, 2006), Bahia- Desenvolvimento do Século XVI ao Século XX e Objetivos Estratégicos na Era
Contemporânea (EGBA, Salvador, 2008), The Necessary Conditions of the Economic and Social
Development-The Case of the State of Bahia (VDM Verlag Dr. Muller Aktiengesellschaft & Co. KG,
Saarbrücken, Germany, 2010), Aquecimento Global e Catástrofe Planetária (P&A Gráfica e Editora,
Salvador, 2010), Amazônia Sustentável- Para o progresso do Brasil e combate ao aquecimento global
(Viena- Editora e Gráfica, Santa Cruz do Rio Pardo, São Paulo, 2011) and Os Fatores Condicionantes do
Desenvolvimento Econômico e Social (Editora CRV, Curitiba, 2012), among others.
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