If we want to understand a society, let alone would wish to bring about certain changes in a society, there’s no need to ask for the national budget deficit, nor for the official government structure, important export products, turnover of corporations, employment figures, infant mortality rates, art forms or tourist resorts. We best ask for the prevailing kinship system.
Why? Because at home children learn how people relate to each other. These behavioral patterns they internalize subconsciously and, as adults, tend to reproduce the acquired behaviors in the wider society. That repetition is facilitated by other adults who have learned patterns of social relationships in more or less similar home situations.
The subconscious is crucial in the internalization and reproduction of behaviors. It is our subconscious brain that decides on what we think, feel and act. In this way, our subconscious makes us largely fit in with existing behaviors at school, at work, in politics, in the traffic, in enjoying art, and follow the media. Finally, our subconscious makes us behave at home, as adults in the family, in ways that we have learned as children. Even styles of deviation from those behaviors may have been picked up in childhood at home.
It is also because of the subconscious character of shared behavioral patterns that it is hard to bring about changes at will, both in ourselves and in others, let alone if there is a lack of motivation to bring about modifications.
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