It is an obvious point that we are all culturally conditioned, but how seriously do we take it?
About four years ago I got together with local Muslim, evangelical Christian, Quaker, Hindu and other friends to found the Peace and Integration Forum in Newbury. Our beliefs differ considerably, but we have a common heart for community building. At the time of the Charlie Hebdo cartoons and subsequent killings we became aware that our different responses were largely conditioned by our cultural, religious or national backgrounds. So we arranged a recent workshop where over 60 people from a wide variety of backgrounds and cultures came together to have an honest look at our own cultural conditioning.
The title for the event was ‘Getting your Answers Questioned’, and was a good mixture of speakers and group discussion. We first looked at our responses to the Charlie Hebdo issue with three speakers, a local Muslim leader, an Anglican church minister and a 14 year-old school student. The discussion from this focussed on the role of education. Would we prefer to send our children to schools which support (or condition them in) our own beliefs, or to ones which foster a more universal ethos?
This was followed by a thoughtful talk on the psychological mechanisms behind social conditioning by Muhammad Tahir, who blogs on ‘Islam and Psychology’, before we widened our exploration to other issues.
Our next panellist was Elena Verigo from Russia, she is presently teaching in the UK, and her father is a Russian military officer. She helped us to live into the history and aspirations of her people. She also shared something of her struggle to be objective about the social conditioning that she, like everyone else, has.
Elena was followed by Jonathan Edwards, the former General Secretary of the Baptist Union of Great Britain. In that role he led a delegation to Jamaica to apologise for the Slave Trade. He had earlier thought that it was completely inappropriate for him to apologize for something for which he had had no personal responsibility. But the turning point came when a Ghanian pastor had said to him, 'You just don’t get it do you? When you come into a room you think we are meeting Jonathan Edwards. And you’re wrong. We see a white man who represents hundreds of years of oppression – and Jonathan Edwards as well.' Jonathan realised that his life is part of a history and, 'I cannot shake off the fact that I have lived a life of comfort and security in a society which has through many centuries made itself rich on the backs of millions of slaves.'
After a time of silent reflection to identify specific examples of our own conditioning, good or bad, there followed animated discussion as we shared some of our findings in mixed groups.
The final two panellists had us riveted as they shared cameos from their lives. Sakira Suzia is a Muslim and a Metropolitan Police officer who received the highest award for bravery in the Met for her role policing the 2011 London riots. She described to us how she got fed up with arresting the same young people time and again. She has just returned to the Met after taking a year out of her job to better understand the power of restorative justice. Immediately following Sakira came Charlie Ryder, who took part in a protest following the Stephen Lawrence murder 20 years ago. This became violent and he was arrested and imprisoned for throwing bricks at the police. He is now a prison chaplain. To have these two people speaking together was a very good example of moving beyond social conditioning and living into each other’s narratives.
In introducing the workshop I gave an example of how ideas take hold. I was recently helping an eight-year-old child with her 'times tables'. I said '7x6' and after a few moments she replied '42'. I asked whether she had to think about that and work it out, or whether she automatically knew the answer. With many things we do in life, like changing gear when driving, we make conscious decisions when we are learning but eventually the action gets transferred to a different part of our brain and we respond automatically. Other things we learn by rote, just because we are told they are true. This can be very helpful if the answer or concept is a correct one, but is very difficult to leave behind if it is questionable. This is true for other areas of life too like religious beliefs, not just mathematics and driving.
I have a Palestinian friend from Gaza who made a telling observation when Gaza was being bombed last year. He said of the Palestinians and Israelis, 'We are both trapped in our own narratives.' In our workshop discussions we identified how true that is of many situations in the world. It can be equally true of husbands and wives, parents and children, or of neighbours who quarrel over a barking dog.
In modern wars people or nations often think that they are in the right in the eyes of God. This is clearly a motivating factor of the Islamic State in Iraq/Syria to set up a Caliphate. It has also contributed towards decisions of some western leaders to intervene in far off lands. And it surely plays a part in the Israeli/Palestinian conflict, where differing narratives have been embedded over the past century.
There is another dimension to all this. The former headteacher of the school in West London where Mohammed Emwazi, who beheaded hostages in Syria attended, has revealed the world's most wanted man 'was bullied at school and did not have many friends'. What effect did these experiences have on leading him to become the man he is? The conditioning influence in his life is not just down to distorted religious beliefs.
Charlie Ryder, the former prisoner in our workshop, said that when he threw bricks at the police that was the point at which his frustration and anger boiled over. His father was an alcoholic and abused him as a child and this was the deeper source of his anger which surfaced during the riot. Fortunately his relationship with his father was healed in recent years before he died. But in our workshop we identified that social conditioning happens on a deep personal level as well as being the product of the atmosphere of society as a whole.
Many points of view were expressed in the lively Q&A and informal discussions. One contribution was from a South African who identified himself as an atheist.
Representing a wide variety of people in the community, all of us really valued the opportunity to look more deeply at the motivations and conditioning which often lie behind some of the reactions we have. There was plenty of scope for lateral thinking! As someone commented, 'I only wish I had had the opportunity for this sort of discussion when I was a lot younger.'
It is good for us all to explore where our beliefs and assumptions have come from, whether these be religious or from everyday life. As someone said in one workshop, 'There are no black and white answers to multicoloured questions!'
Howard Grace is one of the founders of the West Berkshire Peace and Integration Forum. Recognising that we are all socially conditioned sixty people from the Muslim, Evangelical Christian, Quaker, and non-religious communities met together to compare experiences. This article by Howard, arising from this meeting, appeared in the UK Progressive Christianity Network national magazine Progressive Voices in June 2015. Howard volunteers with IofC and has conducted workshops in hundreds of Sixth Forms around the UK. He is also executive producer of the film Beyond Forgiving.
NOTE: Individuals of many cultures, nationalities, religions, and beliefs are actively involved with Initiatives of Change. These commentaries represent the views of the writer and not necessarily those of Initiatives of Change as a whole.
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