After Aldous Huxley's novel, Brave New World, the book made me realize and really think about all the things I was conditioned to believe. The book itself was pretty strange in the beginning, but once I kept reading the book I found myself really enjoying the book. In Bernard's world, having fun and being happy is their way of life. On the other hand, John's world their way of life includes happiness and suffering. Both sides have different definitions of freedom, but what really struck me about both worlds is their ways of conditioning children to be well adept in the world they live in. Bernard's world conditions children at a very young to always be happy (i.e. drug use, polyamory, etc) and to always look a certain way. In John's world, children are conditioned to work hard and suffer in order to be truly happy.
Conditioning struck me the most, because my mom would tell me certain things and I would believe her as a child. Today I got my hair cut about shoulder length, and my mom told me that I looked better with long hair. Prior to getting my hair cut, my mom would always tell me that having long was pretty. As a result, my entire childhood consisted of me always having long hair.
I believe conditioning such as this is passed down generations more often than not. I don't personally know your mother but I'm willing to bet that her mother conditioned your mother with the same belief that long hair was the way to go to define someone's beauty. Parents and grandparents alike will always put certain ideas in a child's head that will stick with them all their life. Or at least until they're old enough to actually have their own thoughts and views on certain things in the world.
ReplyDeleteI agree with both you and Valerie, and I believe that another reason that our parents teach us to be a certain way is because, that is how things were when they were younger. As an example, most of our generation believes that we should have certain rights and freedoms such as, the freedom to be able to wear your hair a certain way, the right to dress any type of way that you want, and especially the most controversial of all, which is to be able to marry whomever you please no matter their gender, ethnicity, or anything else. And because we believe in these freedoms, we will most likely raise our children this way.
ReplyDeleteAs children, we have no choice but to believe what is told to us because we do not know any better. Who else to trust if not our parents or those we hold close to us? While we are conditioned to believe certain thing, we have the ability to choose whether or not to stick with the opinions of those around us as we grow up and begin to search for our place in the world.
ReplyDelete