Session 8- Thoughts Determining Action

"When we are unsure of ourselves, when the situation is unclear or ambiguous, when uncertainty reigns, we are most likely to look to and accept the actions of others as correct" (Cialdini) It is our ideas, regardless of whether they are borrowed, that define our actions. And it is the actions of others and ours combined that define, to a large extent, policy making and decisions. Therefore, it becomes important to question where our ideas about governance stem from, how they are formulated, and whether they are guided by an impetus of right and wrong, or merely a dominant culture, and if its a dominant culture, why is it as dominant as it is, and what is it that feeds this catalyst of ideas that we seem to construct practically every day?

Is it experiential wisdom that we gain from a few adults leaning their own ways? Heywood disagrees claiming those days are long gone. Then is it our own rationale and calculated thought put into all tiny matters? 

I, personally, would think about everything if I hadn’t already been blessed with the luxury of the media that presumably takes quite a lot of pain to present only what is ‘true and hundred percent credible’ to the platter. Yes, today it is the mass media that disseminates information to us about all current affairs, feeds us a diverse range of opinions, and even at times suggestions on what to wear. And we, unwilling to set out on an adventure to seek the truth, find it fair enough to lay still and let them do the job. So, all day everyday, they bombard us with their own cherry-picked, self serving facts and stories which even if we may not accept them, are planted right in our sub-conscience. 

Safe to say, we never tend to question these bits of information fed to us. And without ever realising, these bits shape the opinions we form. And since mass media reaches practically everyone, it succeeds in conforming our thoughts and ideas to some extent.  And as Marx would say, “Our conscience defines our social existence.”