We navigate our lives guided by countless unwritten rules. From how we greet each other and what we wear, to deeply ingrained beliefs about right and wrong, family structure, and the sacred, our behaviours and perceptions are shaped by the cultural mores, taboos, and strictures of our society and religion. These rules are the very fabric of our social reality, yet paradoxically, we are often psychologically blind to their constructed nature, perceiving them instead as absolute truths or simply “the way things are.”
Why this blindness? Why do we so often fail to see the invisible web of norms and prohibitions that envelops us, especially when, from a detached perspective, they can appear arbitrary or even contradictory? The answer lies deep within our psychological wiring and the fundamental processes of human socialisation.
Deep Socialisation and Internalisation:
From the moment we are born, we are immersed in a specific cultural and, often, religious environment. We learn these rules not through explicit instruction alone, but through observation, imitation, and osmosis. Our parents, families, communities, and institutions constantly model and reinforce acceptable behaviour. This process is so fundamental and occurs at such a young age that the rules become deeply internalised. They are woven into our sense of self, our emotional responses, and our understanding of the world. They don’t feel like external impositions; they feel like us.
Normalisation and the Power of Conformity:
If everyone around you follows the same rules, they cease to stand out. They become the “default setting” for reality. When a behaviour is normalised, it becomes incredibly difficult to imagine an alternative, let alone critically examine the existing standard. Furthermore, humans have a powerful inherent drive for belonging and acceptance. Conforming to social norms, even if unconsciously, reduces anxiety and offers the security of being part of the group. Deviating from taboos, conversely, triggers feelings of guilt, shame, fear of ostracism, or even punishment – powerful deterrents against questioning the established order.
Cognitive Ease and the Illusion of Naturalness:
Our brains are efficiency machines. Constantly questioning every social interaction, every belief system, every prohibition would be exhausting and overwhelming. Adopting the pre-packaged rules of our culture and religion provides a ready-made framework for understanding the world and knowing how to act within it. These rules become intuitive shortcuts. Because they require little conscious effort and provide a predictable social environment, they feel natural and self-evident, rather than artificial constructs.
Lack of External Perspective:
We are, quite literally, swimming in the waters of our own culture. It is incredibly difficult to see the water itself when you are immersed in it. Truly understanding our own cultural and religious frameworks requires stepping outside of them, either intellectually (through study of history, anthropology, or other cultures) or physically (by experiencing other ways of life). Without this external point of reference, our own system feels like the only possible or logical one.
Seeing the Constructs: The Higher Perspective
In order to see things more clearly, we need to observe the situation from a different vantage point, by proverbially ‘stepping back’, so to speak, in order to create some distance for the purpose of broadening our perspective. This involves viewing cultural and religious rules not as inherent, timeless truths dictated by nature or a universal cosmic law, but as products of human history, geography, social needs, power structures, and interpretation.
From this vantage point, we can see:
Historical Relativity: How rules change dramatically over time within the same culture/religion (e.g., views on slavery, women’s rights, divorce, dietary practices).
Cultural Relativity: How different societies and religions have vastly different, often contradictory, mores and taboos regarding everything from food and dress, to marriage and death.
The Role of Interpretation: How religious texts and traditions are interpreted and codified by human authorities, often reflecting the social norms and power dynamics of their time.
The Functional (or Dysfunctional) Basis: How many rules emerged to serve specific social functions (e.g., maintaining order, distributing resources, preserving group identity), even if those functions are no longer relevant or the rules are now causing harm.
Recognising these rules as constructs is not necessarily about dismissing them entirely. Many serve valuable purposes in maintaining social cohesion and providing meaning. However, understanding their constructed nature is crucial for critical thinking, fostering empathy across cultural divides, and enabling necessary social and ethical evolution. It allows us to question whether existing rules are still serving human well-being, if they are equitable, and whether alternatives might be more beneficial.
Our psychological blindness to the constructed nature of cultural and religious rules stems from the powerful forces of early socialisation, the comfort of conformity, cognitive efficiency, and the simple difficulty of seeing the world from outside the framework we’ve always inhabited. Developing a different vantage point that reveals these rules as human constructs, not absolute truths, is a challenging but ultimately liberating process, allowing for greater self-awareness, intercultural understanding, and the potential for conscious social change. It is the fundamental step in moving from simply living by the rules to truly understanding the rules that shape our lives.
Worldwide Temple of Aurora 