Who We Are; The Power of Socialisation

This was written for an assignment in one of my courses at the University, and was submitted as same. 

As someone who is often accused of having weird and misguided beliefs and opinions, I have become accustomed to being confronted every now and then with how significant socialisation is in each of our lives. Right from childbirth, we're taught everything from eating, to walking, to knowing when we feel something and how to express it. Every act of learning that takes place right from childbirth; in fact right from the point we attain cognitive functionality in the womb if there's such a time, is as a result of the process of socialization.
Now I define socialization as the ever-evolving outcome of when the effects of our upbringing, our experiences and our exposures in life blend. Merriam-Webster defines it as "the process beginning during childhood by which individuals acquire the values, habits, and attitudes of a society".

The bottom line here is, socialization shapes our very personalities, our temperaments and our perceptions of life. And being aware of this fact greatly shapes the views one has of the society they exist in. Accepting that everything you know and uphold so jealously are just things you were raised to know or exposed to triggers a certain kind of humility in you. Not one that makes you timid, but one that makes you conscious of people's rights to disagree with you and the possibility that you may be wrong.

Knowing the power of socialisation also minimizes cognitive dissonance when we discover that we are wrong. In describing how cognitive dissonance works, French Philpsopher Frantz Fanon said, "Sometimes people hold a core belief that is very strong. When they are presented with evidence that works against that belief, the new evidence cannot be accepted. It would create a feeling that is extremely uncomfortable, called cognitive dissonance. And because it is so important to protect the core belief, they will rationalize, ignore and even deny anything that doesn't fit in with the core belief". Being ready to learn a lot of the time also means being ready to unlearn and discard toxic, bigoted, or just plainly ignorant viewpoints that have been proven to be retrogressive to society. Are we ready to take up that challenge? Let's be honest.

There's a lot to say about how much we have all been affected by the power of socialisation, but it is my hope that by now we'd all have started reviewing ourselves and identifying examples in our own lives. So before we are appalled by other people's beliefs, before we are ashamed of our own past beliefs, let us bear in mind that socialisation is a process and as long as we have not finished growing; experiencing new things and being exposed to new knowledge, our beliefs will always remain prone to some form of evolution. We are all learning.