Past Conditioning

Today I want to touch on the topic of "past conditioning". I define it as the influence of experiences that cause people to react in a specific way.

Past conditioning is often linked to negative experiences that have minor to major repercussions. Sometimes traumatic experiences can cause us to react in a certain matter. Therefore I shall write about how negative experiences affect us and the difficulties experienced in getting over them.

Some examples from real life:

1. Old Uncle saw with his own eyes the atrocities committed by the Japanese army during the Japanese Occupation in Malaya, World War 2. To this day he still refuses to visit Japan for holiday. He tries not to use Japanese products if he can even though it may not always be possible. His good friend tried to reason with him, saying that today's new generation Japanese are not the ones who did the bad things, and the atrocities are the sins of the previous generation. Uncle still refuses to budge, his good friend may not agree but still respects Uncle's principle.

2. Guy has had bad experiences with girls in relationships who treated him badly. More than one have been mean to him, insulted him and said all sorts of negative shit on him. Some even abandoned him by saying nasty things and insults just to get rid of him, leaving him in the lurch. As a result he has become sensitive to certain phrases and behaviour, and at times still haunted by underlying worry that he may be abandoned for no reason or for no good reason or whim and fancy of the girl. He worries he may suddenly be confronted with unreasonable demands or ultimatums for things he cannot offer.

3. Girl has had negative experience with guys who didn't treat her as top priority, who put other things before her. Some couldn't spare her some time, some couldn't bother to treat her like a queen. Others considered her a trophy for "show" or as bragging material. Now she worries that the next guy might treat her like how those guys treated her.

4. Old Grandma (Ah Mar or Ah Por depending on your dialect group) and her siblings lost faith in religion since their younger days. The reason being their father, Ah Pa was dying of cancer and put all his faith in a religious group to get cured. Yes, to the extent of leaving all his money and material belongings to that group. So after he died, his family was left with nothing. And since then the siblings swore never to believe in religion anymore, because they say it's a bunch of opportunists waiting to prey on the vulnerable.

5. Late middle age Uncle does not like Mah Chans, because he personally witnessed the racially motivated killings done by Mah Chans during the May 13 incident back in 1969. He tells all his family members to beware of Mah Chans. His children tell him that not all Mah Chans are bad, there are good and bad people in every ethnic group, that crooked politicians are the ones responsible for racial riots, but understandably it's hard to overcome the negative firsthand experience.

6. English-speaking Chinese young man was looked down upon by other Chinese for his inability to speak either Mandarin or Cantonese. People insulted him by calling him "banana" plus a host of other epithets such as "stupid" and so on. He did try to learn to speak both those languages, but unfortunately his attempts were ridiculed, because those Chinese-speaking Chinese made fun of his accent, lack of vocabulary, and gave him the attitude "If you can't speak it fluently, don't speak it at all!" As a result he does not have a high regard for those Chinese who are non-English speakers, and has completely lost the motivation to learn either Mandarin or Cantonese.

Hmm... From personal experience, I can say I faced the same thing as the guy in No. 6, perhaps even worse. Yet I persevered and learned the Chinese written language through Cantonese pronunciation, picking up some Mandarin and Hakka along the way. I must emphasize I'm far from fluency in those three languages, but I still can function on a reasonable survival level when I'm in an environment that is Cantonese or Mandarin dominated, though I still prefer Cantonese anytime to Mandarin. That's a personal bias due to familiarity reasons. Where do I stand in this aspect? I guess this quote summarizes it aptly: "For a non-Chinese educated Chinese your level is pretty good." Okay, "good" is open to interpretation. To go further on this topic I'd need a dedicated post.

Coming back to the topic, it's evident that past conditioning has a strong effect on people's reaction, and if that conditioning was negative, it takes a lot of willpower and effort to correct. Now I remember from somewhere that "Fear is one of the easiest emotions to impose on human beings". It's very negative, has long lasting repercussions, and takes a lot of energy to undo the damage.

So ideally there should not be negative experiences that cause negative past conditioning, but in this world there is no perfect life experience, well almost none because there's always an exceptional case or two of a totally smooth life story. Just bear in mind that it takes time, patience, effort, and understanding to undo the damage caused by negative experiences.