“Be yourself, everyone else is already taken.”
─ Oscar Wilde
Have you ever thought about the impacts of the society on your life? Have you ever noticed the ways that you get influenced by the culture? If not, you might be amazed that how much our behavioral patterns would be affected and, in some cases, shaped by the society & culture. In fact, society & culture play a big role in setting rules for our lives. In previous articles we sometimes pointed out the influences of the environments on our mind, but here we're going to talk about it in more details.
My main purpose from this article is to open up your eyes
to the possibilities beyond your current visions which might be sometimes faded
out by your limiting rules. Before we get started, let’s talk a bit about the cumulative social
influences. We are where we are because of the human’s capability to gain
knowledge and to share it with each other for thousands of years. By having a brief look at
the evolution of humanity, this ability could be the main reason which distinguished
us from other living creatures. Without having any
disciplines, rules and values, it's not hard to imagine that we would have been struggling to survive in the nature like wild animals. In fact, the rules of our societies helped
us tremendously to be at this point of the history of human beings in which we
not just survived but also prospered as rich civilizations.
But, sometimes social influences might form a norm which could be a kind of limiting rule for us. Most of the times people would fall into
the rules blindly and try to be the same as anyone else. How many times were there wrong rules throughout the history of human beings that needed to be changed? Probably thousands of times.
Was that right to call people slaves because of their color?! Was that fair to
take the voting right from colored people?! Was that right to kill the
people because of their religious beliefs (sadly, this is still happening in
some parts of the world!)?! Believe it or not, these were the norms of the societies
and people were following them (without even questioning the rules!) How do you
think the rules got changed? At some point, someone questioned the current
rules and decided to do something about it. The heroes that we have today, were regular unknown people at the beginning of their path. But, they
were deeply motivated that something needs to be changed and constantly persisted on their
actions to finally break the rules (conventions).
We still have a long a way to go. There are so many
things wrong in our societies that need to be changed such as poverty, economic systems, political systems, environmental management systems, nuclear
wars, racism and so on. There are so many heroes on the way to be born soon. And the good news is that you could be
one of them. Think about it.
Let’s talk about more personal influences that we get
from our societies. How about smoking cigarettes? People know that it tastes
horrible and it will cause a health problem for them. But, why do they still try
it? It is because they have subconsciously linked the feeling of pleasure to smoking. You were
a kid and saw your father smoking and you subconsciously said in your mind: wow
that is cool. You saw your friends who were smoking and to be able to get acknowledged by them, you also joined them to be part of the gang! You saw in the advertisements that
the guy who was smoking cigarettes was so sexy or was getting laid. If you would like
to have any of those fictitious pictures, you will link pleasure to smoking. In
other words, you take smoking equal to being cool, being acknowledged, being
sexy and so on. Now, it is time to consciously ask yourself: were those the
right people for me to model? Better to lead your own life as conscious as
possible.
On the other hand, we see the examples of kids who had
alcoholic parents and grew up against drinking alcohol. How didn’t they turn
like their parents? It is basically the result of the interpretations of their life events. The kid might have seen their parents always arguing, fighting, vomiting after drinking alcohol. It is likely that the kid will link pain to
drinking alcohol and refuse to do the same thing in the future.
Based on the examples mentioned above, you could
realize that how big the parents’ responsibility is to be a good role model for
their kids. They should either illustrate enough pain for the undesirable behavior to
turn the kids against the behavior, or illustrate enough pleasure for the desirable behavior to attract the kids to it. The parents shouldn’t always be personally involved
in the experiences to show their kids the consequences of their decisions. They can show them a
movie, a documentary or a cartoon which displays the consequences of their decisions.
If the experience you are picturing for them is strong enough, or if the experience is repeated enough, they would buy it. I am not suggesting that parents should be
so manipulative to influence the entire subconscious behavioral pattern of their kids based
on their own calls. Actually, in many situations, it is very good to leave the kids alone to make their own judgments and decisions freely. But, the least that parents can do is to don't link pleasure to the wrong habits and behaviors.
By any chance, if you did have wrong role models,
don’t think that it’s too late for you to do something about it. You can always
find new role models in any area you like. Read books, watch movies, TV-series or any other thing about your concerns. The good thing about reading a book or watching
TV-series is that you connect and get used to the characters in the story. That
is an important factor to get positive influences from your new
role models. Choose your resources wisely.
Try to be as conscious as possible in your life and
question anything before committing yourself to do it. Personally, I try my best
to don’t follow the herd blindly. A simple example of this is when some people
are crossing the red traffic light when there’s no car around. If I am not late
for something, I won’t do that at all. I don’t care even if hundred people are
doing the exact same thing. I don't let the peer pressure force me to do something in contrast to my intention. When I know the rule is right, I won’t do the wrong
thing just because everyone else is doing it!
Another current social situation that needs to be
changed is generalization, discrimination and judgement of each other based on the
external factors. In general, people have a tendency to categorize each other
and put themselves into different groups. And, they would mostly like to stay in the
category of majority. For instance, LGBTs (Lesbians, Gays, Bisexuals,
Transgenders) who don’t have hetero-sexual interests in
the common terms of straight people, have many difficulties to get accepted by the society. They couldn't simply get involved in the social engagements. They're not able to easily get a job or even to have
a normal life as anyone else! Is it fair to make it difficult for some people to live just because of their personal interests?!
Fortunately, the situation has gotten better for LGBTs (in 2018) compared to a
couple of years ago, but there is still so much to do so that people wouldn’t
always look at them as a minority. I would encourage you to be as open-minded
as possible, and never judge the people by their beliefs, rules, religion,
sexuality and so on. Do not put the people into different groups by drawing a line between them. Be sure that in the next hundred years, people look back to
this period time and wonder that how could have people discriminated or even judged
the other people by their sexual interests (the same way that we now think
about slavery in the past). Media could play a big role in reducing
discrimination between majority and minority of people in different subjects of
sexuality, religion, etc. Better to erase those differentiating lines
completely so that everyone lives as freely as possible.
The same concept could be extended to social pressures (peer pressures) as well. It means that there would be demands on you to do the things people would expect you to do. For instance, having
a girlfriend, getting married and so on. Again, the majority is doing
something, and they want you to do the same thing as well. I can just say that you
live once, so do it the way you want. You should live for yourself not anyone
else. You can fulfill all of the people’s demands and still they won’t stop asking.
Whatever you do, there will still be some people that ask you for something
else. You can never control the other people’s thoughts and judgments, but you
can control yours. So, ask yourself do I really want to do the same thing as everyone else? Do I need to have the same thing that everyone else has? Consciously thinking about your decisions will reduce the
chances of regret for a wrong path in the future. Many people realize it too late that it was not what they wanted, but other people wanted from
them!
I am sure that you’ve
got the message of this article loud and clear. Do not follow the herd
blindly. Do not imitate other people’s rules without questioning them. Do
not do anything to just impress others. Do it for your own sake, for your
internal desires and belief system.
Expand your vision to
see the hidden possibilities beyond the current rules and conventions. Raise
your standards and break the limiting rules to evolve.
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