By Rami Abdo
Social conditioning is a funny
thing. It is defined as the process of training individuals within a society to
accept the norms, customs, morals and ideologies of that society so that they
may be seamlessly integrated into its functioning structural framework. In
basic terms, it is what society teaches us to be right or wrong. This code of
conduct is based on the specific culture, history, and environment of that
social order, formulated to sustain and protect itself and control its members,
thereupon making it a set of principles that is extremely subjective and
prejudiced.
More importantly, this conditioning
is usually in direct contrast with our own instinctual judgement that is based
on our own experiences and views that we mould during our lifetime; our gut
feeling so to speak. This is where conflict arises within us, creating the
confusion that spearheads a lot of our insecurities, complexes, and other
guilt-ridden emotions that tear us apart from the inside out. On the one hand,
we have been raised to believe that certain things are clearly right and wrong,
a picture of black and white that allows no flexibility in between; we are rewarded
for behaving righteously and punished for wrongful acts, the rules are quite explicit.
On the other hand, our gut feeling usually tells us otherwise, sometimes the
exact opposite. We have to process this second set of pure and untainted ‘laws’
that we have created for ourselves and decide which one means more to us. Which
one makes more sense? Which one should we follow?
Sometimes the intrinsic and extrinsic
line up, although never under the same rules. We know for example that killing
another human being is wrong, mostly because the law says it’s wrong.
Intrinsically however, we also know that the thought of killing someone leaves
us with a sickening feeling in our stomach, so there is a correlation there. But
even this example is not so black and white. If someone threatens to kill you
or your family, would it be wrong for you to murder that person to defend
yourself and the ones you love? Thousands of people are dying every day,
crushed under the iron boots of soldiers who justify their bloodied hands with
the war-torn flags of their countries, the same countries that say it is wrong
to kill. Where does this justification to kill come from? How does its authoritative
voice drown out the voice of reason inside us that tells us not to take
another’s life? It is the same voice that teaches us the code of conduct that
we must follow if we are to be accepted in its society. We are so used to
following its orders that we take everything it says for granted to be true, even
if our internal processing tells us otherwise.
My point being that both of these
sets of principles, internal and external, are constantly changing, adapting
and evolving based on our times and our circumstances. They do not follow a
logical pattern, nor are they getting better or worse. We consider ourselves to
be more ‘civilized’ compared to our more ‘savage’ ancestors, but if those same
ancestors looked through a keyhole of time into our modern world, our culture
would be just as alien to them as we found their culture alien to us. We cannot
be set in our ways any more. We cannot accept that what we have been taught
since childhood will be true forever, just as much as we cannot hold on to a certain
belief inside of us because we are used to it, even though our body is pulling
us in the opposing direction.
So how are we to know which set of
principles to trust in at any given moment, since we cannot trust in neither
social conditioning nor our own personal conditioning? If we strip away all the
conditioning, all the brainwashing, all the norms that we are expected to
follow as individuals and as a group and realize to what extent we have been
herded by society’s iron grip and our own personal history, we begin to
question everything about ourselves: What we believe in, what we fight for,
what we value in our lives... But most of all, we come to realize that there is
no right and wrong. There is no fixed set of rules that we must follow on how
we must act, how we must behave, or how we must conduct ourselves, whether
these rules come from within or without.
There is only that...thing...which feels good; that clean unspoiled sensation within us that we must
inadvertently follow at a given moment, because every inch of our body tells us
to, and to ignore it would be pure folly. It takes us down a path that we have
no choice but to follow, even though we know it will be opposed by those who
condemn it and by our own doubts.
We surrender to it because we must,
because to ignore it would mean to deny our very freedom, our very existence at
that moment to choose our own fates.
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