QUESTIONS

Majority of what we believe are our ideals, are determined by the society that directly surrounds us; our country, our city, our community, our workplace, our families, our friends, thus also, our books, our social class, our religion, our ideologies, our movies, our social media, etc. creating our individual environment.

The input of this environment in our mind is so much that sometimes it feels like a disease to our own authenticity as individuals. It makes us full of dichotomies, and unsure of who we are.

And yet some of us don’t see it. We definitely have a choice over our values, and the reality is that as life presents us with more situations that make us vulnerable, we realize more and more who we are. Our reactions, our judgments. But the sad thing is, we ourselves can’t always see when we are fake, sometimes it’s hard to recognize whether we are acting in accordance to our own core or not; because our need to belong is quite strong, develops and grows in our minds, it bothers us with its definition of “right” and “wrong”.

Very few people can really be entirely unattached of the demands of the demands of this individual environment, it can be scary to be alone and wait to meet people who align with the core of who we are. We have to be really strong to have faith in life.

What triggers a person to become aware of their biases? Is there a lottery that decides who will and who won’t? How could we possibly live without these filters that no doubt serve an evolutionary purpose to grow as a community? What would happen if everyone became aware? How long would it take to become aware of every single bias? How would that feel like for a person? Would we magically reorganize ourselves based on our values? Would we go to war in groups like we did in the name of our communities, countries, and ideologies?

It is crazy to realize you can never really fully be without this disease of biases but that we may at times be able to recognize when others are not being authentic.

Sidenote: probably feeling sentimental over this topic after hearing about Franz Kafka’s life in the video below. In particular the line: “Kafka saw himself through his father’s eyes, and not society’s”. Damn, that touched me hard, because his father sounds like the embodiment of someone living to fulfill his perceived society expectations.