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The Dark Power of Uncertainty and Social Conformity

todayAugust 22, 2020 2

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Our culture, government, education tend to push us towards a reliant environment. The savior premise is deep seeded in our society and subconscious as a collective. When this tendency is not brought up to our conscious, it leaves us open to manipulation from those that do understand this concept. It leaves us powerless to point where we start to gladly give up our sovereignty in the hopes that someone will pull us out of the hardships that we perceive happening around us. We start to rely on others to guide us as to where we place our energy. We give our power away.

When you wait for a miracle or someone to come around and rescue you, you are telling your subconscious that you do not possess the personal power to help yourself. You are telling yourself that you do not have any power over what manifests in your life. You are buying into the behavioral conditioning constantly happening around us. Uncertainty is a powerful manipulation that keeps us in a state of fear. When we know the outcome, some of that fear subsides, even when that outcome is detrimental. Essentially, uncertainty causes more fear than knowing a bad outcome is coming. Think about that for a minute. Now look at the world around you.

Since the early 20th century, corporations, governments, and educational systems have experimented with social behaviorism. Understanding these experiments can help to highlight how we are influenced externally. The hope is that knowledge can help us take back our power in these situations.

Learned Helplessness:

In the 1960’s and 70’s Martin Seligman wanted to further the study of Dr. Watson classical conditioning. Subjects were condition in the previous experiment to expect an electric shock if they heard a bell ring. The purpose of this was to condition the subject to expect a negative outcome. The tendency in a non-conditioned animals is to move away from negative outcomes, and to attempt to find a positive one. This study showed that those conditioned to expect negative outcomes, would spread this conditioning to other situations in their life. I.E. those who were conditioned to expect a shock, are put in a different situation and they will naturally expect the negative.

Violence and social conformity:

The BOBO experiment in done in 1961 and 1963 showed how socially we look towards each other for how to react. Children were exposed to adults who played with a BOBO doll. One test group would witness the adults subjecting the doll to various acts of violence like hitting the doll with a hammer. The second test group observed adults playing nicely with the doll. When the children were placed in a room with the doll and left alone to play, those who witnessed the violence were more likely to imitate it during play.

The Asch experiment of 1951 shows how people will conform with groups in order to fit in. Sound familiar? Or maybe you see videos of people flipping out on others for not wearing masks? Or causing harm to others to be part of social movement that leads to violence and desecration of property?

The Milgram experiment of 1963 took this idea even further. Milgram’s purpose was to test levels of obedience towards authority, even if goes against personal conscience and morals. Subjects were split into two groups of teachers and learners. The teachers were told that learners were to remember and recite back to them pairs of words. As the teacher and learner went over these pairs, incorrect responses would elicit a shock from the teacher to the student. Shocks were described to teachers as mild to life-threatening. Leaner subjects were then told to incorrectly answer on purpose, and that shocks the teacher thought they were administering would actually be fake. Many teachers opted to quit the experiment when they began to think they were causing pain to the learner, BUT 65% resumed the torture when they were prodded by the scientists running the experiment to continue. They were even willing to take the shocks to life threatening intensity when they thought the authority figure was qualified and expected them to comply. THIS IS GIVING AWAY YOUR POWER!

Taking Back Your Mental Sovereignty:

The list of experiments where social influence is shown to affect outcomes goes on and on. The corporations, education systems and governments around the world understand this conditioning and how to use it. Taking your power back means that you ALSO begin to understand how social conditioning affects your life. You choose to bring to conscious awareness what is happening around you, why it is happening, and your response to these influences. We have the ability to stop waiting on authority figures, on a social groups, or our leaders to tell us how to feel or what to do. We have the capability to become the heroes of our own stories. It starts with bring these patterns to light. It starts with listening, really listening, to OURSELVES. Growth does not come from talking at each other to force agendas or ideas, which we might find aren’t even our own if we listened and learned from the information around us and within us.

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Written by: Amanda Roudels

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