We are creatures of habit. We like patterns, they give us comfort and safety. We learn by copying what we see, in others, in nature, both consciously and unconsciously. We pick up what we observe and if it resonates with us, if it helps us survive and grow, we repeat it and keep repeating it until it moves out of our conscious awareness and becomes encoded into our body and mind and we move onto the next pattern. If we examine our life, the people we love, the foods we enjoy, the smells, the tastes we crave are all a result of repetition. Conditioned until there are physical and mental changes that make us addicted to them and we keep going back to them for comfort and safety. You can see this with exercise, where the movements you do will inform your body to strengthen those muscles and reshape your body. The body of a climber is different from a swimmer, is different from a football player or tennis player or a body builder. The mind of a musician is different from a scientist, is different from an engineer or lawyer or a doctor or a mercenary or a politician or a religious leader.

Once you accept this, a lot of your actions and the actions of everyone in society start to make sense. Once your body and mind is set in a certain ways, it takes effort to overcome that interia to make changes, because it resists change. Change always feels unsafe, it needs to be managed and done with patience. The change can be done consciously yourself or you can be changed by external forces and institutions. Like if you want to learn a new skill or language or music or art or sport, it takes time to learn and practice it. Because it's not just about theory, you need to practice it, you need to change your mind and body to imbibe it in yourself. Same holds true for culture and values, you need to practice them for a long time, in various situations to embed them into your identity. The same techniques can be used to influence you as well. You can see this in marketing, exposing you to a product or service repeatedly on TV, internet, different platforms, until you are conditioned and form an association and memory with that brand. You can see this with movies too, play a trailer enough times alongside your favorite movies or TV shows, show the poster in the right places and you get excited enough to go watch it. The evidence of advertising's effectiveness is in the huge amount of money spent on it. You can see this in politics or religion or institutional culture or national propaganda. Repetition is the key to conditioning and influence and once you notice it, you can be more conscious of what you are conditioned or addicted to and also what you expose yourself to. And also how you interact and influence others ethically and responsibly.