Program Me

The society and culture in which we grow programs us to think in a specific fashion. Our view of reality is thus coloured by our socio-cultural environment. But many people are unaware that their minds have been programmed. Many people feel that their constructed reality is true and don’t think that another way of looking at things might exist. To understand the fact that there are multiple ways of looking at the world, some of which are radically different from others, is very beneficial.

Cultural and societal institutions want you to fall in line. They want to control you, so that you don’t wake up and think for yourself. Even institutions which deem themselves to be moral often just want to exert control over people, whether they are conscious of this or not. This is why I'm usually distrustful of overt moralising and sanctimonious behaviour.

Many live in what some might call “the matrix”. The matrix, to me, means a distorted copy of reality, built up over time by a specific culture. It can be wielded or encouraged by people in powerful positions to stop others from waking up and taking control over their lives.  

Socio-cultural conditioning stands between us and a more naked, independent, true understanding of how things work. Many people, it seems, go from birth to grave without perceiving things for what they are. Other people feel they perceive things clearly, because they have educated themselves about politics, for example, or have adopted “alternative” views about the world, but are just as much in the matrix as most others. Other people, again, may have educational qualifications and can learn to repeat knowledge in a robotic way, but still lack a fundamental awareness of how things work. This is why I don’t value things in the same way other people do. I don’t necessarily think it’s amazing that someone has got a first-class degree from the University of Oxford, for example. I would be more impressed if someone has created a beautiful work of art, regardless of whether this work of art was unpopular or not. 

It is difficult to determine what fundamental awareness means or whether some people have woken up or not. Waking up can’t be explained in the same way we explain what a chemical process is, but it involves a dissolution of socio-cultural conditioning and a consequently clear perception of how reality works. Ground-breaking artists often achieve this kind of awareness. Artists challenge the dictates of the culture around them when they create something fresh and innovative. They have cast their minds into the unknown and brought insights back into the known. They have made things conscious that were previously unconscious. 

Reality has a lot to teach us. We need to be receptive. We need to listen, observe and contemplate. We need to humble ourselves to the chaos and majesty of the unknown and integrate its teachings into our lives. We also need to realise that understanding is a continual process. No matter how aware you are, you always have something new to learn.