De-conditioning: A beginning.

From the time we are born our minds are conditioned by everything we experience.  The process of conditioning is so prevalent in our society--is such an all-pervasive and powerful mechanism--that we are in a constant state of conditioning during most moments of our lives.  For example, I have been conditioned to associate some religion with hypocrisy and self-righteousness--others may view it as a vehicle for love and social change.  All of our beliefs about everything in our world have been influenced (or conditioned) by something outside of ourselves, even when introspection has been involved.  In fact, it would be very odd if most of our views weren't influenced by some mixture of both.

Most people know the story of Pavlov's dog, one that is famously used in psychology classes to illustrate the concept of "classical conditioning."  To summarize, Pavlov noticed that dogs in his lab would salivate not just when they were presented with food, but when the lab workers that fed them were present.  Using this knowledge, he trained them to salivate at the ringing of a bell, thus conditioning them to this sound.  They now associated the sound of a bell with food whereas they likely had no such link beforehand.  Though there are many intricacies and complex processes involved and I have only very briefly described the process, people are constantly being unconsciously conditioned throughout our lives.

Conditioning is very powerful and is our "Matrix", if you will.  Another example is money.  If you handed me a small piece of paper you had colored green and covered with some words, I would likely throw it away.  If, however, you handed me a twenty dollar-bill, I would make sure I placed it somewhere safe.  I have been conditioned to see the money as valuable even though, as far as physical objects go, it is not much different from the first piece of paper.

So what is the significance of the red pill?  Are we secretly plugged into a computer program designed to placate us?  My answer to that is "no, not exactly."  The idea is that we are held captive by the way that we have been conditioned by our families, teachers, friends, bosses, coworkers, celebrities, movies, musicians, media, and all generators of pop culture in general.  Karl Marx described religion as the "opiate of the masses."  Karl didn't anticipate TMZ, "Jersey Shore", "Honey Boo-Boo", Gawker, CNN, MSNBC, Fox News, Scientology, or many of the thousands of other outlets for what is happening in our world and, more importantly, how we "should" view these things.

This blog, as a companion piece to the website ourgrowthproject.com, will work to help provide some tools to decondition yourself enough to examine things from an alternative perspective, hopefully one of your own creation.  Click here to go further down the rabbit hole.