I talk a lot about how our socio-cultural conditioning has created the myriad global problems we suffer from today. While I think I have been clear about this, recently, I got a question from a friend to explain more what I mean by this conditioning.
Look at the image on the attached link. It is a picture of a Coca Cola can with dark vertical stripes on the picture. If you zoom closer on the image you start to see that the color red disappears – it isn’t red. That is your brain filling in information of what it expects to see. This is a cognitive effect of ‘color constancy,’ the brains ability to automatically adjust a perceived color based on its previous experience with that color. The brain sees what it expects to see. There’s a whole field of psychology about perception across a whole range of information inputs. One of the complexities of studying perception is validating that what people see is the same, and while people may claim to agree, there is no way we can actually say for certain that they actually see the same thing. Try explaining the difference between the colors red, green or blue to a person who has never seen color. I know a color-blind person who lives in a grey-scale world. He can tell red from green based on its hue and shade, but doesn’t actually see the colors, and nuanced differences of color completely elude him.
We live our lives based on our beliefs. They not only control our behaviors but also our physiology. In the early part of this blog I have written about beliefs (see Knowledge, Beliefs, Definitions {January 2018} Different Truths {Jan 2018}; The role of Limiting Beliefs and Empowering Beliefs 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 {May 2018); and, Social Media Promotes Polarization of Beliefs 1, 2, 3 {August 2019}, so I won’t go too much more into it here (some go the links are here if you want to read further. I’ll stick with the conditioning, which is how you develop your belief structures that govern your life. For most people, this is done unconsciously, and unless they consciously look at their beliefs, will just react automatically whenever a situation arises based on previous experiences.
When you are born, you are essentially a blank slate. (I won’t go into metaphysical aspects as that is a whole complex blog topic in itself.) Cultural conditioning is a process through which humans adopt and internalize the influences, messaging and norms of the environment and translate the interpretations into what becomes their beliefs and how to fit in with cultural expectations. Now here is the kicker. All too often our embedded cultural norms and beliefs become traditions and societal habits that originated often for now forgotten reasons. In other words, for most of us wherever we live on the planet, unquestioningly accept our conditioning, such that by the age of seven, it defines us and becomes our worldview.
Although this experiment was never actually done, it explains how conditioned behavior works. The Five monkeys fable: Scientists put a group of 5 monkeys in a cage with a ladder in the middle and bananas on the top of the ladder. Every time a monkey climbed up the ladder to get the bananas, they sprayed the rest of the monkeys with ice-cold-water. Pretty soon, the other monkeys started dragging down and beating up any monkey as it started to climb up the ladder. Scientists then replaced one of the monkeys in the cage with a new one. This time around, they weren’t going to spray the monkeys with water. The new monkey started climbing the ladder and the rest of them dragged it down and started beating it up, as they now believed that any monkey climbing the ladder would result in them getting sprayed. Eventually all the original monkeys had been replaced with monkeys that had never seen the ice-cold-water deterrent, yet none of the monkeys climbed the ladder for fear of being beaten up by the group. None knew the reason for the ladder taboo, but unthinkingly followed it anyway. The point of the story is to show that conditioning makes us accept behaviors we are used to doing, even when it doesn’t make sense. The only reason being, ‘It’s always been done that way,’ which acts as a block to trying anything new or even questioning why we do things we do.
Cultural conditioning gives you a framework in which you can live, and an environment which feels familiar to you. But can also become oppressive when you feel yourself repressed from ‘being authentic’ and obliged to fit-in. You end up mainly living from what is expected of you. As you grow older you may see many things that are downright wrong, but if your thinking starts to go against the socio-cultural norms you may be ridiculed or alienated from your peers. Extreme conditioning can be felt as a prison. Shedding one’s core Cultural Conditioning comes through Awareness, Expectation, Modelling, Acknowledgement and Evaluation, that are steps in waking up to how a cultural ‘matrix’ (metaphorically just like the movie) controls our perceptions. Recognizing this gives us more freedom in our life, and the possibility to lead a more authentic life style instead of just following a particular socio-cultural pattern.
If you don’t awaken and don’t question everything, especially your core beliefs, your brain is conditioned to change perceptions to what it expects to see. With the Coke can color constancy in mind (top paragraph) your brain will often refuse to see the obvious in front of it. Belief confirmation is always a part of maintaining constancy in your life. It is hard to recognize that what you thought was true could suddenly be a falsehood. This is when cognitive dissonance creeps into your life. It can be really uncomfortable as you recognize past actions and beginning to question things that go against your inner true nature. Not fitting-in with one’s socio-cultural norms goes against the grain how we live as social creatures. Signs such as discomfort with making any decision that doesn’t fit norms; feelings of guilt having made decisions just because they fit the norms; shame or embarrassment regarding a ‘right’ choice but hiding it from others to avoid being chastised; or doing something out of social pressure and not from your true interest, are all signs you are waking up but struggling to think independently.
I find that when I am texting, my phone often autocorrects what I just typed and gives me some unexpected results – I usually don’t see the autocorrect until it has been sent, but it was changed after I already typed in the correct word. The autocorrections are sometimes hilarious, sometimes non-sensical or confusing, and sometimes with a substitution that leads to misunderstanding. One humorous example I now use with close friends is typing ‘Many Crates’ after an autocorrect used that instead of the ‘Mucho Gracias’ I had actually typed. I have to wonder what the autocorrect algorithm thought I was saying in the text? But your brain often does similar things when it autocorrects based on conditioning.
The choice is now before us. It is a simple choice but not necessarily an easy one. “The assault on our minds begins when we are very young children. We are indoctrinated with parental, societal, cultural, and religious values and opinions that suppress our inborn knowledge. Should we resist this onslaught, we are threatened with fear, guilt, ridicule, and humiliation. Ostracism, withdrawal of love, or physical and emotional abuse may also loom. Our parents, our teachers, our society, and our culture can and often do [unwittingly] teach us dangerous falsehoods” Brian Wiess. After all, they were all indoctrinated the same way. It’s not important to know exactly who wants us indoctrinated, just that there is another path we can consciously choose.
The choice to make is to live our authentic self – to come into our own power. The alternative is to simply continue to let the brain ‘autocorrect’ to keep you living ‘conditioned’ within a corrupt and uncaring society. If you feel at odds with your culture, then welcome. You and hundreds of millions, even billions, of others around the world feel the same way – so many are waking up to our global matrix, and how they had been conditioned to believe a reality that is merely one that a corrupt hierarchy wants humanity to believe. Once you stop seeing the world through conditioned black and white, instead seeing it as shades of grey with lots of color, then you are ready to start the next human evolution into a true sustainable world.
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