Why we should break free from culture

You probably know the wide-spread belief:

“You are the average of the 5 people you spend the most time with.”

A few years ago, when I first came across this, I found that to be very relevant, and I decided to apply it to the most extreme extent I could. I’ll explain to you how I did later in this article.

If you’ve been reading my blog, you may have realized that I often use the expression : breaking free from culture.

In this article, I decided to elaborate on what it involves and how we can replicate it – feel free to experiment with it in your own life and reach out to share your experience.

The difference between principles and values

There is a significant difference between principles and values, which you can read about in detail in the article : The Difference Between Principles and Values from Keith Norris.

In a nutshell, what you need to know is that values are culture & time-bound and are subject to interpretation, whereas principles are closer to natural laws, such as gravity.

For example, a value would be a belief such as : family is the most important thing there is. On the other hand, a principle could be honesty, integrity, or respect.

Then you may ask: honesty, integrity, in relation to what ? well, that would depend on your level of understanding of behavior. If you understand why/what makes you feel a certain way, you should be able to undo their source, and therefore no longer feel angry for example.

Some people might perceive a behavior to be anger while in reality, it would rather be a manifestation of involvement for what someone intends to embody. In other words, passion.

Your belief systems would determine to what extent and on what scale you embody your principles. If you have been led to believe that nationality or patriotism is valuable, or as mentioned above, family, this would represent your scale — or scope. It is then likely that your principles will be limited to this scope, unless you question it and expand it by undoing beliefs or adopting different ones.

In other words, your principles could be applied to your beliefs systems and not beyond. Think of it as if you are looking to the distance and only see so far away, whereas an eagle for example that has better vision could see further. In the context of human perception, that also falls into what you do not know and what other might.

That being said, making now this distinction helps to realize that we have been using the term values interchangeably for both of them in the past.

The meaning of breaking free from culture

What is meant by breaking free from culture is operating a change of principles. Rather than just changing from one principle to another, it is more about expanding what we care about – in this case towards the earth and other human beings as one race and our evolution as a whole.

In other words, expanding the scope of who we care about and re-calibrate our decision-making according to this greater scope – that enables us to confront and question social constructs that were conditioned from the environment but were perceived as norms before because we would all share the same limited perception.

To illustrate this idea, you can see below a representation of cultures as they are applied today on a global scale.

As it is today, continents & countries represent cultures as we know them with their sets of values and beliefs systems.

At the time of our birth, we are «acculturate», meaning without culture, unlike the dictionary’s definition, which describes a sense of belonging. This is a very basic yet important example to understand and envision the possibility of breaking free from culture.

Ultimately, learning a culture is unnecessary, as all it does is creating boundaries between us by producing emotional attachment with that culture and its traditions, to the detriment of human connection — and by extension, preventing inclusion.

What we want to achieve by breaking free from culture is returning to a state of seeing humankind as one entity.

We do not necessarily want to give up traditions or religion — or any other set of beliefs system for that matter. What we want is to reach understanding of the conditions that projecting those beliefs produce so that we can refrain from superimposing them onto others (and/or expecting others that they adopt them) and essentially prevent judgement in the first place.

Let‘s further demonstrate the process of getting accustomed to a specific culture with a story.

When I was a kid, I would play football in the neighbourhood with friends. The neighbourhood I grew up in was a culturally rich environment with people coming from a lot of different countries.

Interestingly enough, two of my best at the time was not from my country, because I could not concern myself with where they came from. I did not have a concept of nationality, let alone race at the time. I just saw them as humans.

Imagine you were to return to childhood when you would not have a definition of what race, nationality, or ethnicity. Those ideas would only create boundaries if parents would mention them. One of the most common similar ideas you might have heard is:

“Don’t speak to strangers”

Though this in particular obviously serves and is meant to keep children safe, it also creates a boundary and an inherent fear of the unknown.

Now, if you’ve been told from your earliest age that strangers are dangerous or something similar, it’s possible that you don’t even recall being open to others.

Anyways, the point is, as children, we tend to question things such as racism or butchering animals, until our education or society projects beliefs onto us. It then becomes a habit to the point where we no longer question them anymore.

Take the habit of smoking, the first time, everybody coughs and finds it disgusting, but because culture finds social status & integration valuable and smoking represents a means for them to get it, they do it anyway.

After some cigarettes, they no longer cough, and eventually get used to the taste. Once the habit is established, it then becomes much more challenging to undo it. Not to mention the physiological addiction the substance.

The sets of beliefs differ from a culture to another, although there are common ones among cultures. The common ones are what enable us to bridge differences, to an extent.

What allows someone to learn about a different culture from his are the principles they embody.

For example, if you have deliberately chosen respect as a principle, you will look for ways to embody it regardless of the situation and/or conditions/emotional state you’re in — regardless of culture. This is one of the major reasons why we all ought to take time to choose empowering principles to live by so that it brings our attention in most, if not every action that we take. In other words, to have a framework of reference to re-calibrate towards unity and inclusion.

In the same way, traveling is also a way to increase our understanding of other cultures (represented by Intercultural bridges on the figure above)

It allows people to bring elements from another culture to theirs, thus incrementally expanding their perception, and possibly creating subcultures.

However, it does not imply nor establishes a continuous reflection on the differences that divide us. In other words, the approach to problem solving remains the same according to one’s culture. As such, traveling, is a mean to temporarily break free from culture.

How do you break free from culture

Now that we have some context,

How do we break free from culture and unlearn beliefs that divide humanity ?

Before asking this question, why would we even want to do so in the first place ?

As I mentioned in my other posts : Elevate rather than divide & The elevation of humanity, it seems that feelings such as depression & solitude are directly caused by a prolonged conflict of values — contrary to conventional wisdom and traditional psychology, apparently.

In order to solve those problems, one may leave their environment to join another which is more aligned with their values, but again, this approach will only perpetuate the occurring problems.

Instead of creating communities of like-minded people with similar values, we want to eliminate most if not all of the boundaries between people, so we can live in peace and harmony as one race that we are, humanity.

As out of reach as it may sound, I believe that it is not only possible, but also the only solution to today’s global issues if we do intend to durably solve problems.

Like Einstein once said:

We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them.

This could not be more applicable in this case. Like I said earlier, it seems that principles are the starting point and core to any change, and they are a tool that allow us to effectively operate change on our beliefs by raising questioning where we would not be used to do so. In a sense, they override values.

Two years ago, I read the book : Wipe the slate clean by Marc Isenchmid. At the time, my intention was to get rid of my limiting beliefs to improve peace of mind as you could call it.

Throughout the process of applying the method described in the book, I learnt a lot more about myself than I ever did in any other experience or activity before. Additionally, indeed did I succeed in removing most of the beliefs that were not serving my evolution.

After the process of removal, I decided I would set principles to help me guide the decisions I was going to be making from then on, so I would not experience such pressure and internal conflict anymore.

I also understood the impact of environment, so in order to recreate one that would support evolution, I purposely isolated from most people that would want to enforce undesirable beliefs onto me and seek individuals that would expand my perspective on things.

Although many question the downside of “the virtual world” because of their own background and unfamiliarity with it, it seemed to be a tremendous way to learn from individuals who would be totally unreachable otherwise.

Little did I know the impact it would have and the perception that would allow me to develop. Although it can be a double-edged sword and trap us into a little bubble where a given beliefs system can be reinforced with the algorithms, and thus increase bias.

It seems that when you use empowering principles to guide your behavior instead of values, then and only then can you see past the boundaries of cultures.

Once we have deliberately set evolution as one of our principles — evolution not only on an individual, but most importantly on a global level as well — the process of belief-moderation can take place, because our attention will be much more vivid.

The power of setting principles is that it — considering you do not have limiting beliefs anymore — changes your approach on the way you look at things, and forces you to find solution in accordance to your principles.

It seems that core principles can be combined and therefore have a completely different outcome depending of what they are.

For example, if two of your principles were evolution & profit, you would be only concerned so much by evolution so long as it coincides with your profit aim.

On the other hand, if they were evolution & consideration for the earth & humanity, the evolution you pursued would be directed to assure the betterment of all human beings while respecting the earth resources.

Unfortunately the reality is, society today does not breed the latter. The best scenario for you to imagine the principles that are being passed on is in a corporate environment.

Do you think people are concerned to lower the solitude and isolation that elderly people experience today, although we do have the technology and resources to do so ? No. And why is that ? Because it is not profitable for businesses. This is only one tiny example of how profit has become more and more prevalent in the decision-making of a monetary system.

For any change to last, it seems crucial to remove existing beliefs in order to come up with creative ideas and/or being able to understand them when they are presented to us.

In conclusion

Before anything, we must be aware of the difference between values and principles.

Then here are the steps to break free from culture:

• Identifying & Removing beliefs that are preventing change as well as evolution.
• Setting empowering principles that take down boundaries & favor the sustainability of humanity.

By sustainability of humanity is meant having a long term (lifetime span minimum) approach to problem-solving and using the scientific method to achieve it.

Here are the 3 principles I have arrived at following those criteria : transparency, evolution & unity.

These three principles imply a non-exhaustive list of values which I will describe now.

• Transparency implies values such as honesty, humility, introspection, integrity,appreciation, forgiveness, responsibility.
• Evolution implies creativity, education, efficiency, grit, perseverance, literacy, sustainability, consideration for nature.
• Unity implies trust, respect, consideration for one another, compassion, harmony.

It is also important to note that those values applies across each other. Meaning, they represent what we which to embody. not what we expect that others embody. This is essential to understand because expecting that others “should behave in a certain way” will result in us failing to embody those and judging.

Only when applying science to our environment & behaviors will it enable us to understand it to progress further.

And I will end with the following quote :

Separation only arises when there is no understanding of one’s background & environment.