Are You Your Own Person Or A Product Of Conditioning?
You may not be who you think you are...
If you’ve been fooled into believing that your entire belief system is entirely your own, guess again!Most of us — in fact, a majority of us are not the person we think we are. Incredibly, we are merely tape recorders only replaying over and over what has been recorded into us throughout the years. For example, if you are Catholic, it’s likely because you were born into a Catholic family and just grew up that way. If you’re a Republican, chances are it’s only because your parents are and that’s all you’ve ever known.
So, stop and think for a moment: If you are Christian or Jewish, Democrat or Republican, conservative or liberal, are you that way because you’ve actually taken the time to look at all the facts, weigh all the alternatives, then choose a position all on your own? Or are you only spewing out years of what you’ve been trained, taught and conditioned to think?
While watching a home decorating show on HGTV recently, I saw a husband and wife in deep disagreement over style choices for their new home. The husband wanted a sleek, modern design, but the wife refused to settle for anything that wasn’t old-fashioned. Locked in a stalemate, the designer asked the wife why she refused to even consider anything that wasn’t “traditional.” The wife’s surprising response was that she was raised by her grandmother, so her sense of style and taste was rooted in her grandmother’s love of shag carpeting, floral wallpaper, a china hutch that held dishes for display, and a formal living room that was only meant to be seen and never used. For the wife, THAT was her idea of home and a comfort zone that felt familiar. When she reluctantly agreed to try hardwood floors and walls void of wallpaper, she discovered what she “really” liked, instead of what she “thought” she’d liked all these years. She discovered her true self.
Current Events
Many of us are just like that wife. We “think” we know who we are, how we think and what we want, but for most of us, that is just a fantasy. Our morals, our thoughts, our beliefs, are usually not consciously chosen by us, but rather emotionally ingrained into us through years of conditioning. In an article from Jesse Prinz, a Distinguished Professor of Philosophy at the City University of New York, he explains the theory this way:
Children begin to learn values when they are very young, before they can reason effectively. Young children behave in ways that we would never accept in adults: they scream, throw food, take off their clothes in public, hit, scratch, bite, and generally make a ruckus. Moral education begins from the start, as parents correct these antisocial behaviors, and they usually do so by conditioning children’s emotions. Parents threaten physical punishment (“Do you want a spanking?”), they withdraw love (“I’m not going to play with you anymore!”), ostracize (“Go to your room!”), deprive (“No dessert for you!”), and induce vicarious distress (“Look at the pain you’ve caused!”). Each of these methods causes the misbehaved child to experience a negative emotion and associate it with the punished behavior. Children also learn by emotional osmosis. They see their parents’ reactions to news broadcasts and storybooks. They hear hours of judgmental gossip about inconsiderate neighbors, unethical coworkers, disloyal friends, and the black sheep in the family. Consummate imitators, children internalize the feelings expressed by their parents, and, when they are a bit older, their peers.
As Prinz so deftly explains, our way of thinking has been culturally and emotionally conditioned into us from a very early age. For example, most of us pass down the myth of Santa Claus just because our parents did it to us and their parents did it to them, and so on. Although there is no logical reason why this myth must be perpetuated, we all continue to fall right in line and do it anyway, simply because it’s “tradition.” None of us have actually taken the time to think about “why” we do it — we just do it anyway. That is conditioning! Despite our egos telling us that our religious, political, cultural and moral beliefs are all our own, that couldn’t be further from the truth.
So, the next time you find yourself embroiled in a heated discussion about if there is or isn’t a God, if you are for or against same-sex marriage, or if Barack Obama is a competent and intelligent American or a gutless moron from Kenya, stop and think for a moment and ask yourself: are your thoughts, morals and values TRULY “your own,” or are you merely spouting off years of what you’ve been “conditioned” to believe?
It feels like every day I'm realizing how many of my beliefs are sourced from other people.