Calendar Girl Blog: Conditioning
When I forget to apply conditioner to my hair, I get a head covered with fly around friz. If I intentionally peel back the layers of my social conditioning, my carved in stone thoughts turn to dust.
Everyone is conditioned in some fashion. We believe things our parents have laid out for us with nary a moment of inquiry. Books fill us with indoctrination. Society explains our role through media.
Each of us display and pass on our conditioning through our beliefs and attitudes. We condition out of fear. We condition in the name of love. And we condition to control.
What would happen if we were all allowed to believe something different? Imagine that everyone's viewpoint was valid. Consider what would happen if you held several different perspectives because each in some way resonated some truth for you. Suppose that instead of defending our thin slice of life vehemently, we collected every perspective we encountered and added them all to our world view replacing the idea of 'black or white' with 'black and white'. Or more.... black, white, red, yellow, burnt umber and grey.
Women with breast cancer often claim that 'the cancer was the best thing to happen to them.' As far away from my experience as breast cancer is, I understand the point. It often takes adversity for people to make positive changes in their own lives. Yet, this is not my personal perspective, nor do I wish to face what appears to me to be a very tough situation, namely breast cancer. If this fate arrives at my door, I'll obviously face the challenge. Until then, I'd prefer to live cancer free.
Here's a question. Can I hold this breast cancer survivor belief in my awareness and continue to want a cancer free life? Does this make me shallow? Closed? Narrow minded? Or must one of us be wrong?
Calendar Girl wonders if it's possible to intentionally free herself of social conditioning in a socially conditioned society.
Calendar Girl
Tags: Calendar Girl Blog, calendar girl blog, Breast of Canada Calendar, Sue Richards, middle of normal. Guelph
Everyone is conditioned in some fashion. We believe things our parents have laid out for us with nary a moment of inquiry. Books fill us with indoctrination. Society explains our role through media.
Each of us display and pass on our conditioning through our beliefs and attitudes. We condition out of fear. We condition in the name of love. And we condition to control.
What would happen if we were all allowed to believe something different? Imagine that everyone's viewpoint was valid. Consider what would happen if you held several different perspectives because each in some way resonated some truth for you. Suppose that instead of defending our thin slice of life vehemently, we collected every perspective we encountered and added them all to our world view replacing the idea of 'black or white' with 'black and white'. Or more.... black, white, red, yellow, burnt umber and grey.
Women with breast cancer often claim that 'the cancer was the best thing to happen to them.' As far away from my experience as breast cancer is, I understand the point. It often takes adversity for people to make positive changes in their own lives. Yet, this is not my personal perspective, nor do I wish to face what appears to me to be a very tough situation, namely breast cancer. If this fate arrives at my door, I'll obviously face the challenge. Until then, I'd prefer to live cancer free.
Here's a question. Can I hold this breast cancer survivor belief in my awareness and continue to want a cancer free life? Does this make me shallow? Closed? Narrow minded? Or must one of us be wrong?
Calendar Girl wonders if it's possible to intentionally free herself of social conditioning in a socially conditioned society.
Calendar Girl
Tags: Calendar Girl Blog, calendar girl blog, Breast of Canada Calendar, Sue Richards, middle of normal. Guelph
posted by Sue Richards at 12:29 PM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home