I first encountered Mark Fisher’s work in a noisy library on a cold winter afternoon.

The weight of his words felt like someone quietly pointing out a trapdoor under my feet that I had never noticed before.

Fisher wrote, “An ideological position can never be really successful until it is naturalized, and it cannot be naturalized while it is still thought of as a value rather than a fact.”

At first, I didn’t fully grasp it. But as the thought sank in, a strange sadness followed—an ache born from realizing how much of my life might have been shaped by forces I couldn’t even see.

Fisher wasn’t being abstract; he was talking about how the world we inhabit is built on systems and beliefs so deeply ingrained that they feel like the air we breathe.

They’re not seen as opinions or values, but as the natural order of things.

And that’s the dangerous part: when ideologies stop being questioned, they start to control us.

The Quiet Power of Ideologies

Fisher’s insight is profound yet deceptively simple.

He suggests that the most successful ideologies are the ones that blend into the background.

They don’t require active belief or fervent support.

They simply become the default. No one even thinks something else is possible.

Take capitalism. It wasn’t always considered inevitable. Once upon a time, it was one of many economic systems, debated and contested.

Now, it’s often treated as the only way the world can function.

The phrases we use—“You get what you work for,” or “That’s just business”—aren’t just words.

They’re signposts of an ideology that has become so deeply entrenched that it feels as natural as gravity.

Understanding How Ideologies Take Hold

Fisher builds on the work of thinkers like Gramsci, Althusser, and Marx to show how ideologies transform from ideas into “facts.”

Here’s how this process unfolds and manifests in everyday life:

Mechanism	How It Works	Example	Impact on Individuals
Repetition	Constantly exposing people to the same ideas until they feel natural.	“The market knows best.”	Normalizes inequality as a result of merit.
Cultural Embedding	Integrating ideologies into art, media, and education, making them seem universal.	Superhero movies glorifying individualism.	Distracts from collective solutions.
Selective Framing	Portraying alternatives as unrealistic, naïve, or dangerous.	Universal healthcare as “unaffordable.”	Limits imagination of what’s possible.
Language Manipulation	Using loaded terms to frame ideologies positively and alternatives negatively.	“Reform” vs. “radical change.”	Shapes public perception and closes off debate.
Institutional Reinforcement	Enforcing ideologies through laws, policies, and social norms.	Privatization of public services.	Creates tangible barriers to alternatives.
Blaming Individuals	Shifting focus from systemic issues to personal failures.	“You just need to work harder.”	Fosters shame and self-doubt instead of systemic critique.
Historical Revisionism	Rewriting history to make current ideologies seem inevitable or predestined.	“Capitalism defeated communism in the Cold War.”	Undermines alternative narratives and potential lessons.

The Stories We Live By

It’s strange how ideologies seep into our lives, often without us noticing.

They’re embedded in the stories we consume and the language we use.

Antonio Gramsci’s concept of hegemony describes this process as a kind of “consensual domination,” where power operates not through force but by shaping what we think is normal.

Let’s take the idea of meritocracy.

On the surface, it’s a comforting story: anyone can succeed if they work hard enough.

But dig deeper, and the cracks appear.

What about the millions of people working hard and still struggling?

What about generational wealth, systemic supression, and other structural barriers?

Meritocracy ignores these realities, framing inequality as a personal failure rather than a societal one.

The Costs of Naturalized Ideologies

Naturalized Belief	Who Benefits?	Who Suffers?	Why It Persists
“The Market Is Efficient”	Wealthy elites, corporations.	Workers, small businesses, the environment.	Economic policy and media reinforce the narrative.
“Hard Work Guarantees Success”	Employers who rely on cheap labor.	Low-income workers, marginalized groups.	It shifts blame from systems to individuals.
“Inequality Is Inevitable”	Politicians who avoid systemic reform.	Disenfranchised communities.	Repeated in political speeches and textbooks.
“Growth Is Always Good”	Investors, big businesses.	Ecosystems, future generations.	Framed as progress in media and culture.

W.H. Auden’s Melancholy Mirror

This brings me to W.H. Auden, a poet whose words often feel written for moments of quiet despair—those times when the world feels too loud, too relentless, and too indifferent.

Auden had a way of capturing the contradictions of life, finding tender truths hidden within great failures.

Even in his most somber works, there’s a faint whisper of hope—like a small ember refusing to go out.

In his poem “Musee des Beaux Arts,” Auden reflects on the world’s indifference to individual suffering.

The poem is inspired by Pieter Bruegel’s painting Landscape with the Fall of Icarus, where Icarus’s tragic fall into the sea after flying too close to the sun is barely noticed in a busy, everyday scene.

Auden writes:

About suffering they were never wrong,
The Old Masters: how well they understood
Its human position; how it takes place
While someone else is eating or opening a window or just
walking dully along;

These lines show how suffering is often ignored, overshadowed by the routines of daily life.

In Auden’s view, the fall of Icarus goes unnoticed: the plowman keeps working his field, and a passing ship sails by without stopping.

The poem highlights how systems—whether social, political, or economic—tend to prioritize function and productivity over humanity.

It connects deeply with Mark Fisher’s critique of capitalism’s ability to make suffering invisible or, worse, seem normal.

Auden’s imagery of indifference mirrors Fisher’s argument that ideologies, like capitalism, become “naturalized” when they stop being questioned.

In a world driven by profit, personal tragedies are often seen as unimportant, mere footnotes to progress.

Fisher might say this mindset allows us to keep moving forward without asking why suffering exists or whether it could be avoided.

Yet Auden doesn’t leave us with just the pain of indifference. The closing lines of the poem challenge us to confront the vulnerability of human life.

The painting’s lack of attention to Icarus doesn’t erase his tragedy; instead, it makes it more poignant.

Similarly, Auden’s poetry urges us to notice the unseen, to pay attention to those who fall unnoticed and unheard, their stories drowned in the noise of the world.

In both Auden’s poetry and Fisher’s ideas, there’s the recognition that seeing and caring are the first steps to change.

Through their work, they remind us that even in a world full of indifference, we can choose to notice, to care, and perhaps, to start imagining a better way.

Critics:But What If Fisher Was Wrong?

Fisher’s ideas are powerful, but they’re not without criticism. Some argue that naturalized ideologies aren’t all bad. They can provide stability and coherence in a chaotic world.

The belief in the rule of law, for instance, is ideologically constructed, but it helps maintain order and justice.

Others suggest that Fisher underestimates our capacity to resist.

While capitalism feels all-encompassing, there are cracks in the system: worker cooperatives, mutual aid networks, and grassroots movements.

These small acts of defiance remind us that ideologies, no matter how entrenched, can be challenged.

As David Graeber wrote,

“The ultimate hidden truth of the world is that it is something we make, and could just as easily make differently.”

The Scary Part: Trapped in the Unquestioned

And yet, Fisher’s warning lingers.

What happens to a society that stops questioning its “facts”?

What happens to us, as individuals, when we can no longer imagine alternatives?

The thought is unsettling. It’s like realizing you’ve spent your life in a room with no windows, not knowing the walls weren’t real.

History is full of examples where naturalized ideologies justified horrors.

The divine right of kings. Racial hierarchies.

The idea that colonization was a benevolent act.

All of these seemed “natural” at the time.

What are the ideologies we accept today that future generations will condemn?

The Scary Part: Trapped in the Unquestioned

And yet, Fisher’s warning lingers.

What happens to a society that stops questioning its “facts”?

What happens to us, as individuals, when we can no longer imagine alternatives?

The thought is unsettling. It’s like realizing you’ve spent your life in a room with no windows, not knowing the walls weren’t real.

History is full of examples where naturalized ideologies justified horrors.

The divine right of kings. Racial hierarchies.

The idea that colonization was a benevolent act.

All of these seemed “natural” at the time.

What are the ideologies we accept today that future generations will condemn?

Social Media and the Internet

Now, let’s talk about something that should terrify us all: social media and the internet.

It’s a playground for false realities, and we’re all trapped in it, scrolling mindlessly, addicted to the noise.

We’ve let it become the new “natural.”

We’ve traded our ability to think critically for a dopamine hit.

I’m horrified by what I see—these platforms aren’t connecting us; they’re flattening us.

They’re teaching us to think in soundbites, to reduce our world to algorithms.

The worst part? We don’t even realize it’s happening.

Social media isn’t just a tool; it’s the ideological machine of our time, subtly (and not-so-subtly) shaping how we see the world.

It tells us who we should be, what we should like, and even what to care about.

The ideological control is invisible, a “fact” rather than a value.

When the very platforms that promised to connect us only push us further into isolation, what are we really sacrificing?

We’ve allowed these spaces to shape our thoughts, to dictate our emotions, to curate our reality.

And when was the last time you really questioned what you saw on your feed?

When did you stop to think about why you felt the need to scroll through mind-numbing videos, to absorb endless opinions without ever challenging them?

You’re stuck in a loop, and I fear we’ve all gotten too comfortable.

We accept the bias, the misinformation, and the outrage as the way things are. It’s been naturalized.

We’re feeding into it.

And it’s poisoning us.

Not just with the triviality of “likes” or followers, but with the erosion of critical thought.

It’s like we’re letting someone else shape our minds, and we’re too tired to care. We’re so hooked on this system that we’ve forgotten how to imagine alternatives.

We’ve forgotten what it’s like to think for ourselves. And that, my children, is the most dangerous thing of all.

You have the power to break free from this machine, but it requires effort.

It requires reclaiming your ability to think, to question, to fight against the invisible forces that are slowly suffocating us all.

Don’t let this become your “normal.”

Don’t let this be your world. T

here is so much more out there—if you can still see it.

Conclusion: Hope in the Cracks

Here’s the thing: Fisher doesn’t leave us without hope. In fact, he believed that the very pervasiveness of capitalist realism—the sense that nothing can change—also creates the conditions for its unraveling.

As he wrote,

“The tiniest event can tear a hole in the grey curtain of reaction.”

It’s terrifying to think how much of our lives might be dictated by invisible systems.

But if these systems were built, they can be dismantled.

If ideologies can be naturalized, they can also be questioned, debated, and undone.

The cracks are small, but they’re there. And through them, we might just glimpse a better world.

Not yet realized, not yet naturalized—but waiting for us to imagine it.