Ideology is defined as a set of individual, group or social beliefs and ideas that determine the possessing subject and that place it in the existing reality in a particular way. Although on the one hand an ideology is understood as an individual way of thinking in which different preferences, choices, beliefs and ideas are present, it can also be understood as the system of ideas of a social group that is expressed through it in the social group everything.
The ideology can seek three main and well differentiated objectives: maintain the existing reality (they will be those ideologies that seek to preserve the system or 'conservative'), return to previous realities (ideologies that are known as 'reactionary' since they imply a change but in regression) or transform reality in a progressive or revolutionary way towards new social forms (these are revolutionary or reformist ideologies).
Ideologies can in turn be of different types: political, cultural, economic, social, moral, institutional or religious, sometimes there are coincidences between different types of them, for example between some political and economic ideologies or between religious and moral ideologies. Unlike the notion of worldview (which represents the total set of a society or civilization), that of ideology always implies belonging to a certain group of people that faces another by nature. In most cases, ideology implies a certain dogmatism precisely because of this opposition to different systems of thought and it is here that some ideologies throughout history have gone from simple dogmatism to deep totalitarianism.
Some of the ideology examples best known to us today are liberalism, nationalism, socialism, communism, fascism, anarchism, and conservationism (at the political level); feminism, environmentalist ideologies, anti-globalization, for racial and sexual equality, for freedom of thought and pacifism (on a social and cultural level); Christianity, Judaism or Buddhism among others (on a religious level).
