It is true that as babies we absorb whatever cultural cues we are taught and pick up on. This ensures that we will be loved and nurtured and be thought of as good and not be rejected and punished by our tribe. But the operative words in your question are “as individuals.”
When we start to distinguish ourselves as individuals, we no longer just go along with whatever we were taught. We start to think for ourselves. We see that many of our sacred values are merely the result of conditioning and training. Mommy and Daddy think that all people of a certain race are bad. You think for yourself, find out for yourself, and arrive at your own conclusions.
So, as individuals, we are never the puppets of our environment. We clearly navigate our way through it based on our own experiences and reflections on them. This is what individuality means. It doesn’t mean being a sheep, a marionette, or a ventriloquist’s dummy. Many people do not exercise their individuality and prefer to drift along without ever examining what is declared as true.
But if you are truly an individual, you stand on your own feet and are not swept away by the tide that pulls most people into its whirlpool. You can swim away.
When we start to distinguish ourselves as individuals, we no longer just go along with whatever we were taught. We start to think for ourselves. We see that many of our sacred values are merely the result of conditioning and training. Mommy and Daddy think that all people of a certain race are bad. You think for yourself, find out for yourself, and arrive at your own conclusions.
So, as individuals, we are never the puppets of our environment. We clearly navigate our way through it based on our own experiences and reflections on them. This is what individuality means. It doesn’t mean being a sheep, a marionette, or a ventriloquist’s dummy. Many people do not exercise their individuality and prefer to drift along without ever examining what is declared as true.
But if you are truly an individual, you stand on your own feet and are not swept away by the tide that pulls most people into its whirlpool. You can swim away.
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