The Conditioning

By Nico Cost for GlobalSouth.co

Children believe in fairy tales and adults appear to do the same. We are gullible. When something is repeated often enough or told by people we trust, it must be true. When the fairy tale is passed on for generations, it becomes ingrained in our collective memory. This is also called conditioning.

There are many known examples. The Earth is flat until it is a sphere. The Sun revolves around the Earth until it is the other way around. Santa Claus exists until it is invented. The weapons of mass destruction in Iraq existed until the country was brought to its knees. The Minsk Accords were serious until they were merely to buy time.

Propaganda, fake news and disinformation are of all times. But my concern here is not with the substantive examples of, say, the moon landing, MH17, JFK’s assassination, 9/11, democracy or NGOs. I am concerned with stirring up self-reflection with the goal of seeing through one’s own conditioning and learning to shake off the fairy tales.

This starts with a willingness to be able to see everything, but really everything, as untrue. Everything you have believed in all your life, you must be able (willing) to reject as untrue. Not that everything is false, but you must be willing to change your opinion completely. This is not an easy task and can lead to considerable turmoil within yourself.

The child who believed in Santa Claus was quite dismayed when it turned out to be a lie. How extraordinary that the adult already has so many calluses on his soul that lies are part of life and you shouldn’t be too hard on them. When you start to realize that there are so many lies about extremely serious matters your world may collapse. Do you want it to.

But what if your life is defined by that. That your happiness in life, your health, your relationships with others and your development as a (spiritual) human being are limited by lies. If the adage is that we all have to work hard for our money, while some have so much money that they can never spend it.

Isn’t there something terribly wrong in our world where some children are whining for a horse of their own and others are starving to death. Where in my country a healthy loaf of bread costs 5 euros where in other countries a family can live for 5 days with 5 euros. Where rich people can get richer by using money to make more money.

We all see this and most take it for granted. It is just the way it is. By not dwelling on it, it stays that way. We don’t really want it, but also don’t want to do anything about it. Because it is the way it is. This is the fairy tale in which we live. I am writing this to make it clear how this works, in our heads and in the world. Stand by it for a moment.

I want to make it clear that our conditioning is much deeper than we think. That conditioning stems from both interests and trauma. Interests in the sense of propaganda. The Russians are coming. The Chinese are stealing everything. Trauma using genocide and slavery as examples. Tribal man allows himself to be programmed into us versus them.

It is all understandable, man is just still primitive. There are those who make plans and there are those who follow plans. As long as the masses are not conscious, things will remain as they are. As long as we are conditioned, we are not ourselves, we are not free and we keep running in circles. Doomed to keep repeating misery.

From my Western perspective, I try to see through more and more lies. The Russians are not coming, they have to defend themselves by necessity. The Chinese don’t steal, they want to trade fairly. How the landlord is, he trusts his guests. I have been fed lies all my life. Western interests permeate so-called truth.

But it is so much deeper. I follow several Western people who have good hearts and really seek the truth. Like me, they condemn genocide, the colonialism of the West, exploitation and so on. And yet they still think China is bad for people. A persistent thought they can’t get rid of.

First, who are we Westerners to think anything about that. We are not Chinese. We don’t understand anything about China and Chinese culture. Isn’t it up to the Chinese themselves to shape their own country. Just as we want to do for ourselves. Surely it is incredibly arrogant to think that we know better for others how they should live.

Second, we do not know at all how Chinese experience their country. Yes, the propaganda is plentiful. The main stream media as well as the alternative media are pushing lots of stories about the Social Credit System, Tibet, the Uighurs, Hong Kong and Taiwan. How much of that is true. I estimate very little. It is a distorted picture.

How do you respond to a statement that the moon landing may have been a lie. Regardless of what exactly is true. But just being able to look neutrally and examine whether it is true or false to you. So if you reject the proposition immediately, you are not very open to other truths. Then the conditioning has succeeded well. And most conditioning is much more subtle.

Democracy is what the world needs. We need to help all countries get democracy. People are best off with democracy. It is important to protect democracy with measures even if they are undemocratic. People who do not want democracy should still be urgently advised to embrace democracy.

Can people who grew up in a Western democracy still consider that they would rather not want to live in a country founded on Western democracy. As if other countries are better then. But you don’t know that at all. And if you are going to live in such a different country with your Western cultural background, you don’t know either.

Shouldn’t we mainly mind ourselves and let the other be the other. It is hard enough to be yourself because most are in the process of becoming themselves. To be somewhat successful in that, we need to shed our conditioning. All lies must be eliminated from our system. That requires investigation. Deep research.

And if you don’t know, you don’t know. Don’t fall back on what you think you know, because that’s a big trap. Don’t settle for the status quo. Keep it open if you don’t know. Dig further, dig deeper. Take your time. Decades of conditioning you don’t put off in a few months. And remember that you remain constantly bombarded. There is no news.

How it is on the other side I do not know, but I suspect that conditioning is everywhere because interests and trauma are everywhere. Finally, it may also be clear that we are all being played off against each other. A divided world does not turn against its common enemy. Their greatest fear is that we become mass conscious.