We are all victims of our perceptions. Even the most open minded of us might be surprised to find how easily we have been seduced by what we read or hear. We are what we make of ourselves, we become who we believe we are.
Of course those open minded souls would vehemently deny that they are influenced in any way by outside forces, don't they after all consider all logical options before deciding on which route or choice or action to take? I put it to you that you do not.
We are products of our environment, we develop and become the people we are by influence from our parents, peers, social groups, friends and education. You may be yelling that you have fought all such restrictions and broken away from so many of those ties that this in no way could possibly apply to you; indeed you may have broken away, but was it not exposure to those very things that made you contrary to particular restrictions or regulations in the first place? I have to conclude therefore that my earlier statement stands.
I am not suggesting that we cannot make choices or that we are incapable of changing our viewpoints or directions in life, I am merely trying to point out that if you were to consider very sincerely why you are who you are and where you are that it may not be as surprising as you think.
Nothing in life is pre-scripted, at least not in such a way that it is unchangeable, but we are all victims of our own perceptions and no matter how open minded or reasonable you may be, we are not so different all of us. We all believe exactly what we choose to believe at the end of the day and like it or not, we will continue to do so, therein lies the greatest challenge that humanity will ever face. Our inability to accept that we cannot change others, we cannot force our beliefs or morality on those who do not accept them, our inability to be comforted by the fact that the next person has the same regard for things that we as an individual may have, this is the reality of the human condition.
It is likely that this 'Utopia' will never be achieved, because even if the world were ruled by one universal set of regulations and one universal religion (if you must), human nature is what it is and we cannot speak for those yet unborn or those yet uneducated and those who do not speak at all.
We are all arrogant in our own suffusive little ways because we all believe that what we believe is right, it has to be right, it cannot be otherwise..... or can it?
Admitting to our own arrogance, our own chosen martyrdom's and to the fact that our perceptions may not be entirely correct is something we are not so easily willing to do and until we can educate ourselves and our children in the fallibility of our own shortcomings, we are unlikely to progress to a society that is anything close to being civilised.
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