Why It’s Difficult to Uproot Our Conditioning

Do you think you have been conditioned by your society and culture? If you think you are not, then think twice. Our environment conditions our minds. Now, to put that in perspective, a baby just born doesn’t have any conditioning, but as we grow over the years, the conditioning happens. Our family, ‌then our community, then education, later our occupation over multiple decades. So we know this happens, then what’s the problem? The only problem is later in life we awaken and realise these conditioning is actually holding us in a cage. Besides, most of the time we don’t even understand that we are programmed. For example, what are the tenets of our conditioning that influence our behavior? Like, why do we react in the way we typically do. Understanding the why part is even tougher. So, in this post, let’s explore why it’s difficult to uproot our conditioning. 

“Conditioning obstructs our view of reality. We do not see IT in its suchness because of our indoctrination, crooked and twisted.” ~ Bruce Lee

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What is Conditioning of Our Minds

There is a book by Aldous Huxley named a Brave New World in which he talks about a dystopian world in the future which operates through conditioning of our brains. Just imagine when a baby is born it doesn’t have any conditioning. Thereafter the journey of conditioning starts and continues until death. To me conditioning is like filters or lenses that we put on to see of perceive what’s going on around us. It is through these that we are constantly judging others and most of the time us. Now that is scary to be aware that we are judging ourselves all the time. Therefore the question is who provides us these lenses and filters that we put on our minds? It first starts with our family, the community, then society in general and our workplaces where we spend a significant portion of our lives.

Now we live in a global economy, so a lot of the work conditioning is similar across the globe. However what I observe is that different occupations have different filters and lenses. The more the number of years we spend in a particular type of occupation the more conditioning happens to us. Having worked in corporate jobs in my career I have observed a lot of the conditioning pertains to job titles, hierarchy, span of control in terms of teams and capital and business criticality. The more I think about it after moving on from corporate job at 51, they are truly our conditioning. Specifically corporate occupation conditioning.

Do We Need to Uproot Our Conditioning?

Now we need to ask is there any problem with these conditioning? Since it is natural that this conditioning happens to us. However I think first of all we need to be aware of the conditioning that we have.

For instance if we have worked in high profile jobs it might be worth becoming aware whether we have any prejudice towards workers who are lower in the hierarchy of organizations they work. Additionally do we have any superiority complex of our status in society. For example if we live in an expensive zip code or posh area do we have any prejudice towards people who are not so privileged in society and have meager means. Further, do we have any complex towards poor or homeless people? For instance I have observed when higher status people talk about homeless people there is clearly a prejudice as if it is sin the homeless people have committed. Have they? To illustrate again, think about children. Do they have any prejudice towards poor and homeless people? They don’t because they don’t have any conditioning yet.

Therefore the question: do we need to uproot our conditioning? That is something I think we need to reflect upon ourselves once we are aware of our conditioning. Personally I think we come naked in this world and will die naked. The more we leave behind these conditioning that we acquired over our lifetimes the more we get prepared to die one day.

Why It’s Difficult to Uproot Our Conditioning

So if we can convince ourselves that we need to uproot our conditioning then can we do it? First it is not easy, it’s really tough. Because we live in a society where people wear their filters and lenses. Since people around us influence us all the time. To uproot our conditioning we need to go against the herd often. Like becoming absurdists. Whereas it might sound interesting but becoming someone like an outcast in society is a solitary journey. Because people view you as someone who doesn’t fit into society.

Conditioning our minds is like programming. So rebooting our operating system is tough since it’s the wiring that has happened for decades as we grow older. If we continue to stay in the environment which conditioned us then it is very difficult to rewire since the wiring would continue and only grow deeper. Given that we live in our society and continue to work in our existing environments, detaching ourselves from all our attachments our environment has offered is really tough. Now humans are social beings, the conditioning of money, power, fame and sex is really hard to detach from unless one chooses to live like a monk. That leads us to the question: if we really want to uproot our conditioning even if living in our existing environments can we do it?

Can We Recondition Our Minds

I have been exploring and experimenting on my conditioning that has happened to me over the past three decades. As I moved on from my corporate career after 28 years, I am trying to be more aware of this conditioning. Especially the conditioning around identity and social status. Even though I have ventured into several experiments to explore my true calling and vocation for the next half of my life, I often struggle with a simple question like, ” What do I do for a living? ” Now I pulled the trigger to move on since I was financially independent. I think I’m more in a valley now where I am still exploring the second mountain of my life that I want to climb. Thus, to answer the question, can we recondition or rewire our minds, I think yes, we can, but it will take a lot of conscious effort.

I was reading about wild animals which are kept in captivity for a long time and those which are domesticated. And how they struggle when left in the wild. They cannot easily assimilate into the wild since they have often lost the skills they need to survive in the wild. Think about a giant elephant that is tied to a small stake in the ground. Why doesn’t it uproot the stake or snap the rope it is tied to? Since childhood, elephants, when they didn’t have sufficient strength, couldn’t break away. When they grow up, they accept they cannot break away anymore. I think if we cannot uproot our conditioning, even realizing our conditioning is a step forward in the direction to uproot our conditioning.

Why Recondition Our Minds

Finally, the question: why do we need to uproot our current conditioning and then recondition it? Meaning shall we gain by rewiring our minds? First, let’s try to understand what I mean by rewiring or reconditioning. I think when conditioning happens to our minds; we see everything around us with only one lens or a limited set of lenses. Whereas if we rewire our minds, we can see our external environment through multiple sets of lenses. Meaning it’s like opening as many windows of our mind so that we are receptive to all the variants of the external ambience that interact with our mind. Then we are more open to diverse perspectives and see all the sides with ambivalence.

Then, once we open all the windows of the mind, we can rewire our minds with a broader perspective. That can make us more empathetic to a broader set of people, community and global outreach. Besides, this helps us overcome our narrow-mindedness. Even though we live in a highly divided world, set apart by innumerable boundaries and restrictions, I believe the only way we can free ourselves from the bondage of our mind is to give it an opportunity to get more light from as many directions as possible.

Conclusion on Why It’s Difficult to Uproot Our Conditioning

To conclude why it’s difficult to uproot our conditioning is because most of the time we are not even aware of our conditioning. To illustrate, we are continually programmed since our birth through our upbringing, culture, and society. The first step is to be aware of this conditioning. Then only will we seek to open the windows of our minds and get in more light from different directions. Only when we have more illumination of our minds, do we realise there are other perspectives that we never even knew? For instance, a professional working only in the corporate world rarely realizes and appreciates the diversity of other occupations. It is as if we run on a single track of mind and don’t even fathom there are infinite tracks.

Therefore, to uproot our conditioning of the mind, we first need to work on our self-awareness. That opens the windows and the doors towards uprooting our conditioning and subsequently rewiring our minds.