How Society Brainwashed You (and how to escape)

Article #133 of Life Unlocked - A Newsletter by Dr Yath

There’s an invisible script most people follow without question. It’s handed down by culture, reinforced by family, and rewarded by society. The script says there is only one right way to live. Study hard. Pick a respectable career. Get married at the right time. Buy a house. Have children. Retire quietly. Stay within the lines.

No one says it outright, but you feel it in conversations, glances, and expectations. The pressure to conform is rarely loud; it’s polite, persuasive, and wrapped in advice. “It’s for your own good.” “Be practical.” “That’s not how things are done.” These statements sound harmless, but they are the tools of quiet control. They keep people in systems that benefit from predictability and obedience.

The danger of this conditioning is not that people become malicious. It’s that they become blind. Most genuinely believe their way is the right way because they’ve never been shown another. Culture wires certainty into their identity. The more generations repeat the same path, the more it feels like truth. To question it becomes not only uncomfortable but offensive.

You see it everywhere. In professions that worship seniority over innovation. In communities where marriage is treated as a milestone rather than a choice. In workplaces where the loudest person is mistaken for the most competent. In families where respect is earned through compliance, not character.

I see it in medicine all the time. When you tell another doctor you’ve left clinical practice, something shifts in the air. They smile politely, but the smirk says more than words ever could. The unspoken message is clear: you’ve left the tribe. You’ve abandoned the “right way.” To them, medicine is not just a job, it’s an identity badge, one they cling to because it gives meaning. The idea that someone could walk away and still feel fulfilled threatens that identity.

But this is not unique to medicine. It’s visible in every sphere of life. The artist who gets told to “get a real job.” The woman who chooses not to have children and is met with pity. The man who prioritises peace over ambition and is called lazy. The person who chooses freedom over stability and is branded reckless. Society has a limited imagination for what a good life looks like, and it polices anyone who colours outside the lines.

Tradition can be beautiful when it connects us to our roots. But when it dictates who we must become, it stops being culture and starts being control. Many South Asian families, for instance, have treated certain careers (doctor, lawyer, and engineers) as symbols of worth. Those choices were once about survival and status. But times changed, and the narrative didn’t. Even now, people whisper behind your back if you choose differently, as though stepping off the conveyor belt is a failure rather than freedom.

The irony is that the people enforcing these norms often mean well. They want safety, security, validation. But in trying to protect you, they project their fear. Their advice says more about their anxieties than your potential. They aren’t defending truth, they’re defending familiarity. Because if your path works, theirs becomes questionable. And most people would rather stay right than stay curious.

Conformity doesn’t always announce itself with force. It seeps into you through repetition. It tells you that your doubts are dangerous, that change is disloyal, that comfort equals success. It teaches you to fear standing alone. But progress, both personal and societal, has always begun with the ones who were willing to stand alone.

Those who defy tradition are often mocked before they are admired. The pioneers of every generation are first called naïve, then brave, then wise.. always in that order. As George Bernard Shaw said, “All progress depends on the unreasonable man.” The reasonable man adapts to the world; the unreasonable one insists the world adapt to him.

If we want to live fully, we must first identify the scripts we’ve inherited and ask: Who wrote this for me? You can respect where you come from without being bound by it. You can love your culture and still challenge its blind spots. You can honour your past without handing it the keys to your future.

The truth is, people who get most upset when you live differently are the ones too afraid to do it themselves. Your freedom highlights their fear. Your choices expose their lack of them. And so they react. Not from wisdom, but from discomfort. That’s not your burden to carry.

There will always be people who smirk, gossip, or try to steer you back to their version of right. Challenge them. Ask them to think for themselves. Ask them to dig deeper. They are still fighting for permission to be themselves.

The world doesn’t need more people following rules. It needs more people rewriting them. Because every time someone chooses authenticity over approval, a new possibility opens for everyone else.

There is no one right way to do life. There never was. The sooner we stop pretending there is, the freer we all become.

Have a great week ahead,

Yath

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Quote of the week:

“You must be the change you wish to see in the world.” — Mahatma Gandhi