Social Conditioning: The Most Powerful Mind Altering Drug of All
October 18th 2006 06:26
It starts when we’re small children, about the time we first develop self-awareness. Society steps in – first in the form of our parents, then out teachers, then the media, or bosses at work, our peers – and tries to tell us ‘who we are’. That’s when we begin creating the false self, the self that is a response to the demands of the society around us. We begin managing other people’s impressions of us, we begin to lie, we begin to act like a reflection of what we think the world expects us to be. Before too long we can no longer see ourselves in the mirror – we have stepped through the looking-glass. We forget that the false self is an artifice, and we begin to believe our own BS – we begin to believe that the false self is the real self, and thus submerge our real selves inside the tomb that we have created to encase it. Indeed, social conditioning is the most powerful of all mind-altering drugs.
But what happens if you suddenly wake up and remember who you are? What happens if you try to reclaim your real self? You will find yourself besieged on all sides, surrounded by a society full of other false selves who are utterly hostile to what you are doing. A counterfeit HATES the presence of the genuine article because it reveals his own ‘counterfeitness’ by comparison. Above all, it is the people closest to you – your family and your closest friends – who will oppose you the most vigorously, because they are the ones who have made the heaviest investment in thinking of you as you have always seemed to be. And once your true self comes out they will not recognize you, thus proving that they never knew you in the first place. They will, ironically, accuse you of having become phony because you won’t think what they tell you to think anymore or say what they tell you to say. And they will do anything, ANYTHING, to beat you back into your tomb. For most people, complete authenticity is ‘crazy’. But what is ‘crazy’, really? My personal definition is” “any way of being or thinking that is inconsistent with the prevailing 21st century insanity; i.e., being ‘normal’.
I thank God I’m crazy. If I wasn’t, I’d probably go insane.
But what happens if you suddenly wake up and remember who you are? What happens if you try to reclaim your real self? You will find yourself besieged on all sides, surrounded by a society full of other false selves who are utterly hostile to what you are doing. A counterfeit HATES the presence of the genuine article because it reveals his own ‘counterfeitness’ by comparison. Above all, it is the people closest to you – your family and your closest friends – who will oppose you the most vigorously, because they are the ones who have made the heaviest investment in thinking of you as you have always seemed to be. And once your true self comes out they will not recognize you, thus proving that they never knew you in the first place. They will, ironically, accuse you of having become phony because you won’t think what they tell you to think anymore or say what they tell you to say. And they will do anything, ANYTHING, to beat you back into your tomb. For most people, complete authenticity is ‘crazy’. But what is ‘crazy’, really? My personal definition is” “any way of being or thinking that is inconsistent with the prevailing 21st century insanity; i.e., being ‘normal’.
I thank God I’m crazy. If I wasn’t, I’d probably go insane.
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Comment by Damo
So in the world of conditioning is there no freedom? Only if you believe that this conditioning is absolute and people lack the courage to make their own choices.
Comment by JakeDanger
The Matrix
So I would encourage people to make their own choices, but the choices we make are often defined by who we think we are - so if we allow society to tell us who we are, then we allow society to determine the choces we make. For example: I'm a lawyer, but then again I'm not. That's just one of the roles I play, not my identity. I find my peers all tend to think alike (they "think like lawyers" because they've been subtly taught that "what you do for a living" = "who you are". They all drive the same cars, live in the same neighborhoods, vote for the same candidates, etc. Off-duty conversation revolves around fascinating topics like furniture, dog food, and drywalling one's basement.
Ultimately, we made society; it didn't make us. Though we all have to follow certain rules in order to live together in peace, we should not treat society as if it were a god to whom we owe our identity. It's not either/or: it's just that the more we are conditioned to believe that we are nothing but a set of roles, the more we allow our roles to swallow us up, and the more plastic" and more dehumanized we become.
Conversely, the more we exercise the courage to think for ourselves and rely on our own perceptions, the more of our original humanity we recapture. That is what I'm trying to encourage people to do.
Society's function is to produce mediocrity. If one of its members slips from mediocity down into depravity (crime, mental illness, etc.), society will take corrective action - either to reform or treat the person, or to warehouse that person (as in a prison) so that he will no longer threaten others. Likewise, if a person tries to move up from mediocrity into greatness, society will move against him and attempt to either push him back down into mediocrity or get rid of him (or her). And by "greatness" I don't mean Bill Gates. I mean Jesus. I mean Nelson Mandela. I think that it's likely that more great men and women have been executed by society than have won Nobel prizes.
Comment by Anonymous
Social conditioning is exactly like a drug- a psychedelic drug that one becomes completely dependant on the more one identifies oneself with one's role in society.
For example you hear people saying things like Steve is an accoutant and therefore thinks like an accountant and bahaves like an accountant. Do all accountants behave and think like Steve- not remotely, I'm an accountant and I dont even know myself enough to be compared to Steve or any other accountant for that matter.
The difficulty in all this is that once one stops taking the psychedelic drug of societal conditioning one begins to see reality for what it really is. A world full of frightend individuals pretending to be courageous to their families, friends, employers, religious leaders & themselves.
Do you have any ideas on how one can stop taking the societal conditioning drug indefinately because I find myself going back and forth. This is because it's so much easier to be accepted by just playing the role that society is used to. The role that you have partly contributed to.
Please assist??
Comment by Jake Danger
Comment by respeezy
great post
keep it up