Saturday, January 14, 2012

Is there a natural, unique, impulsive and expressive "self" that lies underneath all our social conditioning?

Social conditioning by itself came about because of the uniqueness of each and every individual who expressed themselves in a lot of ways that created all the "common inventions" that we now accept as beneficial. If we were to live back in the prehistoric times without all the conveniences that we grew up with, our behavioural patterns would still be a lot different owing to factors like: a) environment b)unique experiences of our parents c) genes. The environment is essentially the same since it's all trees and mountains and lakes, but different individuals "react" differently to the same stimuli, that in a sense creates a unique experience and is ped on to our offspring normally via our genes. Also, the parents themselves do some sort of "conditioning" by telling their children what’s right or not or what should be done or not, based on their unique experiences. So, even without social conditioning according to what you have mentioned, an individual will always instinctively express himself/herself totally different from other people. Wouldn't you feel bored if everybody has the same behavioural pattern or personality? Everybody was meant to be born different, one way or another, even twins cannot be essentially the same. It's what variation is all about. We were created that way and Nature has meant it to be so. Man also has a natural instinct of superiority based on what we have learned that we are practically on top of the food chain. It also means that we have learned to support this instinct because of the comparisons that we have made with other organisms. Based on this primitive knowledge, there will be inevitable changes in our behavioural patterns because of our tremendous ability to adapt to the changing environment that would inevitably make us advanced the way we are now.

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