Social conditioning - a thread for those who admit it impacts on them.

[SomersetONeil]

This topic seems to be so hotly denied on many threads I read on here (MN in general, that is).

Or else, admitted, but denied on a personal level. As in, 'OK sure, societal conditioning happens, but I choose to do X because I prefer it'. Acknowledgement of societal conditioning, but a peronal distancing of themselves from it, as if they're above such things.

We all undertand how marketing works, how social norms and unseen pressures work, and yet so many people insist it doesn't work on them.

Is it because to admit you're affected by it means you're somehow not very smart, don't have much nous, susceptible, gullible? What?

People also say that the accusation of social conditioned is patronising. Why?

I'm intelligent, well-read, educated, and I fully admit to being socially conditioned on so many levels. I'm not in the least bit patronised by the suggestion. Why would I be so arrogant as to believe that I am immune to it?

Anyone else?

Thanks Himalaya I have just had a look at the book on Amazon, it looks really interesting, I am wearing the Marxist goggles I might order it later.

We all look at the world through tinted goggles because we have a head full of ideas concious and otherwise, I would agree but for one thing, without the stimulus of the outside world no human would ever conceive of any ideas. It would be like asking whether it was possible to think if you were raised in the dark and the silence, without touch or smell. Apart from hunger what else would we be capable of experiencing and therefore thinking. For that reason I think even materialism explains why we even have ideas, does that make sense? We are driven by the need to survive,(eat & produce the means to eat being the strongest driver, inborn in every animal from birth) everything else springs from this.

Himalaya "I agree that businesses find ways to play to people's fears and securities about how they look......"

You're right. There is a HUGE amount of money to be made from playing to people's fears in general.

I'm socially conditioned to believe that I, as a female, am putting myself at risk by walking alone on the streets late at night, especially if I am drunk. Yes, this social conditioning does have an impact on my life and finances. Positively or negatively? Both, I'd say.

Himalaya The idea of being "conditioned to conform" sounds a bit circular to me. If we didn't have the urge to conform we couldn't be conditioned in the first place.As you say, we are social animals.

I agree with this up to a point, but its worth remembering that there is a second kind of 'forced' conformity- a bit like breaking in a horse. It allows us to be controlled by those with more power than us. We conform in this way to survive and the force is fear, violence, humiliation, imprisonment and brainwashing, wielded by the powerful party until for our own survival until all resistance is 'conditioned' out of us. We then have Stockholm Syndrome. This is why people weep when their violent dictator dies. And for those born into a violent autocracy, all those things done to survive - passivity, compliance, not complaining, 'liking' pain, humiliation and violence, etc have their root cause invisiblised and seem like simple 'virtues' and 'the way things are and should be'. Unaware that we are mentally enslaved to suit the purposes of those who rule over us.