Social Conditioning (Warning! Thought Tangents Ahead!)

Think about yourself. The hugely complex set of thoughts, desires, goals, morals, ideas and assumptions that make you 'You'.

Which parts of yourself have you consciously chosen? And which parts did you simply assume?

The majority of people will be either male or female. And maybe you have never thought much further than that. You simply grew into a socially conditioned version of your biology, without ever questioning what, exactly, this means. Which qualities are specifically masculine or feminine? How much of who you are is inborn, and how much is a product of how you were brought up, the culture which you have been steeped in since the day you were born?

If you had the choice, would you still be the way you are? If you could start again from scratch, what would you change?

What is right and wrong? How do you know? Have you examined the ethics of your actions in the world, or do you simply assume that, because you live a 'normal' life, then you must be doing ok?

Speaking of 'normal', what do you see as normal? What is acceptable? These ideas are inextricably linked to the wider society. Do you agree with the majority view because you have critically examined it and found it to be right, or simply because it is so pervasive that you may not even have noticed its influence?

Maybe you deliberately try to act counter to social norms. Maybe for the fun of it, or maybe because you are trying to change something. Are you being truly subversive? Are you really changing anything? Is what you are doing right? Or are you simply reacting against society in a meaningless way? Or perhaps you are following different norms. The subculture, the political movement, the rebel alliance you belong to, why have you chosen it? What does it do for you?

Is everything you do motivated only by the ego? Are all your actions simply designed to support your world view? If you changed your beliefs, would your personal identity crumble around you?

I am trying to critically examine every part of my life. This is, possibly, a recipe for some kind of horrendous post-modernist mental breakdown, but hey, I need something to fill my time.