A thought came to me today.  I was driving in my car to get some food.  I realized that almost all of my thoughts and belief systems have developed over time, but the inputs that fashions that ideology often should be questioned.

![desertisland.jpg](https://cdn.steemitimages.com/DQmPNpz9gR1bhn3KkiSLyAE2KnuyjabdAQAWrE3sWTMCAEK/desertisland.jpg)

It isn't that I am not committed to what I believe.  It is that I have been able to sanitize my beliefs with real life experience from all over the world, and I have been able to A-B check anything that I read, hear or see on TV or the Internet with real life experience.  But many people have not the same opportunities.  Often faith is simply an acceptance of what someone or some organization tells you, but with no ability to validate it.  That requires a major leap on behalf of the believer.

Faith is a shared belief with others, allowing some form of peer group analysis of ideology.  That said, mass hypnosis is not an unusual concept so that if many believe in the same thing, it often could be a response to stimuli that is fed to a larger base group.   And with more and more ability for people, corporations or governments to reach massive numbers of recipients for a very low (often free) price on the Internet, it is more likely that we will be tested using these well accepted mass hypnosis techniques.   

![ica_620x372_154293dbcfcb95971671d6df2cec0d7900a11.jpg](https://cdn.steemitimages.com/DQmPhoe5NigGewWZhXexbxFhAe4WbXL8gd9iQWYhB7EiMX7/ica_620x372_154293dbcfcb95971671d6df2cec0d7900a11.jpg)

Often your belief of reality is simple choices made between different options.  You get attached to your choices.  Often threatened by challenges to those choices.  It makes sense - you have chosen from the provided options, and people get defensive to their choices.  

However if you lived on that proverbial desert island, and your choice options were not fed to you by media, but by actual observations and learning over time, then your belief system would be very different.  For example, if you were attempting to determine if an animal was friendly or a threat, then you would not be able to make that choice without actual experience.  Maybe it attacked you once, therefore you believe it to be a threat.  Maybe you were never attacked and it befriended you, so therefore you do not see it as a threat.  In this case, no one could try to persuade you - only your perception of actual experiences.

In today's world, experience doesn't seem to count.  You will believe that a group, tribe, race, religion, etc. are a threat or a friend depending on what someone has told you.  Maybe you have had some experience, but typically it is clouded by previously provided information.  Changing that position is a major ideological change for most because it not only invalidates all those you trusted to provide you with correct information, but it challenges yourself.  Most do not like to be challenged that way.

![crowd.jpg](https://cdn.steemitimages.com/DQmSFj2rTgDDAwxh7i1WsgMhZoHyUMX69YZoNAhNHpkxVvJ/crowd.jpg)

The bigger the group that you align with, the more likely your ideological thoughts are determined by that group.  Not by your own experience.  This means that you may be limiting your considerations because the inputs to your decisions and beliefs are being fed by a group that may be biassed or simply all share the same position that they don't like their fundamental beliefs challenged.

<h2>But you are you</h2>

The fact is that you will probably outlast your affiliations with large groups.  Often people change their beliefs as their life experiences grow.  There is more "I saw it with my own eyes" experiences that allows you to draw not from trust in a 3rd party telling you what reality is, but what YOU see as reality with your own eyes.  Those that choose not to travel, for example, have less of a basis for life decisions.  They don't see a broader range of options in the world and then typically don't settle for someone else's version of truth.  They seek it out because it defines the inputs to their decisions for the future.

<h2>The story of the Hummer</h2>

This last week as I write this was the 17th anniversary of the 9/11 terror attacks in New York City.  The world came together on a common belief that the USA mainland had been attacked and thousands of innocent people lost their lives.  All of the people who were on those planes perished, so there isn't anyone who was "there" to tell their story so we all pretty much learned of this event through the news media.  It established an input to millions of people, and in the case of Americans the input was that a threat had arisen.

There's a theory in psychology of the "Reptilian Brain".  The concept that due to our emergence from caves and wilderness, we rate higher the concept of threat and defense from attack, that we do for most other stimuli.  This understand of psychology covered a very large demographic.  So after 9/11 and the many other terrorist attacks that followed was a society that felt threatened. 

The Hummer urban vehicle emerged.  By taking the design of the military vehicles used in desert combat, and turning it in a "luxury" SUV, they sold them by the thousands.  Everyone who could afford it (and many that couldn't) bought one because the underlying psychological reason was "it will keep me and my family safe".

![2006_hummer_h2_base-pic-42874-1600x1200.jpeg](https://cdn.steemitimages.com/DQmdWsrpfNMAQp3TBH6WM34TeoKEtYfvbDby1i9Kr7NpAJj/2006_hummer_h2_base-pic-42874-1600x1200.jpeg)

Soccer moms through to new money milenials spent huge amounts of money to own one of these.  Even though there was plenty of published evidence that they had horrible fuel mileage statistics and the cost of ownership was enormous.  Yet they sold.  A VERY successful business venture.

Why?  Because people put the reptilian brain ahead of logic, financial conservatism, and deeper thought.  The inputs fed to them by the media was that at any moment we could be attacked.  Was that going to happen on a freeway?  No.  Was it going to happen dropping off the kids at school or dance lessons?  No.  Was it going to happen on the road, driving to work?  No.  The choice of vehicle had nothing to do with risk mitigation from terrorists.  It was only likely to be safer on freeways, but even that had not been proven and was highly subjective.

The reality is that the population got fed stimuli and reacted this way to it.  

So I return to the topic of this post, and my thought today.  If you were not exposed to media, what would you really feel about different decisions you are forced to make?  Example:  If you have chosen a political party to vote for because you are aligned with that party, and they are campaigning on a policy or issue that you disagree with, do you have the intellectual strength to use your own life experience as the inputs to the choice you have to make?  Or do you either have no life experience to draw from, or will you just follow the herd and vote down party lines?

Choose wisely but wherever you can, expand your life experiences so you have your own reality to use for choices you have to make.  Ask yourself, "If I was living on  a desert island and not influenced by media, would I make that choice?"