Initiation

Babies are born with few instincts, beyond the most primitive reactions to pain. How to suck, making eye contact, possibly fear of snakes. Most everything we become is acquired via learning. Any baby placed in any social environment will pretty much work out, all things considered .

Of course we learn quickly, spontaneously, consciously and unconsciously. Children are amazingly flexible and accept almost any situation as normal. Until they grow old enough for logic to kick in. Then things get complicated indeed, more so as experience and contact networks enlarge .

So, for the most part, it is no surprise that most people born into any culture support that culture. Not only that, but support their own class and the position of their family in that culture. That is probably a kind of innate human instinct, necessary for tribes and societies to survive .

Oh, of course we can “reprogram”. We often do – or at least think we do – as adolescents, prime youths, or middle-aged adults. How well we adjust to “paradigm shifts” in society – which now  seem to arrive with frightening speed and frequency – depends much on how old we are .

I find that after much turmoil and adjustment as the entire world changed, I still retain many of my early initiations .

For better or worse .