Cultural Programming

[Dei Eif]

How long have we programmed ourselves to see the ideal state of being as defined by our partnerships? Surely there is a genetic component to it as procreation is a primary goal of the life process, but why do we let this either happening or not effect us when we aren't directly in control of the process anyway? And beyond that, why is having the desired partner for you involved with how one views oneself? Are we taught to be this way or is it natural?

It seems that as far back as one can look anywhere on earth, mates equal status. This evolved into the modern concept of married life with all it's associated dogma and legal framework and whilst I'm not opposed to marriage, like many things we do that seem natural and rational for everybody they can go horribly wrong possibly simply because we invest so much psychological and emotional energy into letting it define who we are.

I think it's important for children to begin their lives in the care of people who love each other, but it's not essential as I'm not the result of a loving marriage but a broken one my mother escaped from when I was 2, so I wasn't raised by any paternal figure at all and most people see me as highly capable, independent and even visionary. I don't want to compare this admittedly optimistic view of myself to who anyone else becomes that grew up in a married couple run environment, but it's impossible to have this discussion properly without acknowledging what I've observed from people who strive so hard to satisfy and exceed the expectations of two parents instead of one, or none, as my mother certainly didn't demand high standards of excellence from me or my siblings and let us define for ourselves what satisfaction from life should be. So what I've observed from people who spend years or decades or even their entire life trying to maintain a standard set by a parent or parents, a family name or a dynasty, or just the standard we all seem to have programmed into each other everywhere that you are lesser than without a partner by your side engaging child rearing for as long as possible is that it's a carrot on a stick in your mind, a goad from the judge in the mirror. A control on behavior. A repression of full exploration of the self identity and potential, or at best a channeling and funneling of the identity and potential.

We clearly don't value child rearing for it's practical value to the world and to children as the most important part of a life of union or there would be no orphanages. We clearly do not wish to admit this to ourselves nor that we are in subconscious competition for approval from ourselves and by extension our perceptions of everyone around us or we would replace mugs and shirts that say "worlds greatest mum or dad" with something like "I adopt children before animals". I'm not saying it's wrong to be proud of parentage, I'm saying the order of values in life and the perceptions it generates by extension are completely skewed.

So where did these notions arise from and why are they ingrained into us? Is it a connection to nature whereby we function on instincts rather than reason? How are we to ever create a world we want to live in if we create only the world nature keeps us bound to? Is it a dogmatic adherence to cultural normative and idealization from religion? Are they the same thing? It's hard to even think clearly about this and I'm as much of an outlier to all of this as you're generally likely to find anywhere. But more about the outliers then.

Why do we have an epidemic of people rebelling against their genetically defined gender and an epidemic of people we used to cal virgins but now call incels going from viewed as chaste and pious and self focused to a literal undersmench? Hitler created this term to mean "less than human" and we have dozens if not already hundreds of new synonyms for undersmench in the modern lexicon. The inverse of this is the "ubersmench", the Aryan, Hitlers ideal human. Why we don't actually learn anything as a species is beyond me when so much blood is exacted in the lesson, why we go through cycles of reliance upon this way of defining ourselves or that way of defining each other is also beyond my full comprehension as is most of what I'm trying to discuss... Help? Help me out here with what you think because we are losing our collective grip on reality as a whole and people are in droves fleeing from the notions I began speaking about, the humble life of heterosexual union. Maybe that's not unilaterally bad as I tried to make clear it's definitely not unilaterally good, but where are they fleeing to and to what end? What does the future look like as an extension of today?

Is it within our reach to understand that you can give a child a grounding in love until they are cognizant enough to take over their own life education? And we do that younger than most people accept once they have become the early educators. Can we not be as dependent on validation and support from a partner as the children partnerships produce are in their early lives? Surely the suicide rate would drop even if the divorce rate increased from it's already staggeringly high percentile if we just reform our understandings around what we should mean to ourselves as being by necessity more important and coming before how others view us. Surely it's easier than we like to imagine to raise a generation of balanced individuals without keeping a home together with ideological glue when all the fixings have rusted through.

There's so much more to say about this, I could truly go on about this the rest of my days before being satisfied there won't be pubs full of men drowning their self worth, clubs full of women giving their self worth away and a generation of children embittered by the notion that the rules changed suddenly and permanently only for them and now no one knows what their future is even supposed to look like. Surely we are smarter than this? I know I am.

You know what's actually difficult? Understanding and explaining the nature of reality once you realize the nature of being a human being is NOT AT ALL what has ever been presented to you.

_Some guy. 

 

[theanonymousbear]

This is a lot to read and I hope I followed it all. You are addressing many different things but I think part of what you're describing has to do with the dissonance between the biological imperative to reproduce and the norms of most societies that have stated for centuries that we are to take on a spouse, have children, and raise them to be good, productive people. In thinking about the biological imperative part, what we find desirable in a mate is (in my opinion) directly influenced by societal norms which is interesting when you think about. Take peacocks, for example: Every male peacock relies on their tail feathers to "woo" the female. It's been that way probably forever and it doesn't really change. Humans do the same in a fashion but what males and females find attractive changes all the time based on whatever cultural norms there are. Funny thing is that I just thought about this before I found your post. I was watching the movie Swordfish from 2001 and there was this scene in the movie when a few women removed their tops and started walking into a pool with only their underwear on. Of course, those filming made sure the butts of the women were well within the frame and at that time, they would have been considered very attractive. However, with many of the standards used today, where there seems to be this steadily increasing desire to have a steadily increasing-size rear, they would most likely not be viewed as desirable and attractive now as they were 22 years ago. Societal norms shape what we find to be alluring. Where does that fit with all you wrote? I don't really know...just something that came to mind.

 

I wonder how your early life experiences with your mother and her marriage to your father affected your current views, if they did at all.

 

I apologize in advance too if I miss some of your key points. It's sometimes hard for me to follow what I am reading on a screen when there's a lot to read. Guess I'm getting old. Cheers.

Edited March 19, 2023 by theanonymousbear
left out a point

[Dei Eif]

Get that big ass outta my face is where it fits with me. Just kidding. But not really.