A broad definition of "Culture" would take hours and pages to define. I will oversimplify it to be "that set of rules and taboos that define a community of members". The size and composition of the "members" can be as small as a few hundred people growing African Violets in a "club" to as large as the European Union trying to form a competitive model to oppose Asians and Americans.
Conditioning is the process of laying out the rules and taboos that must be matched for membership in a culture.
This is way too large of a subject to be briefly mentioned. So I will do exactly that. A lot of people here will argue that there is no such thing or that I have exaggerated it's role in acculturation.
I am convinced that words matter. We have for too long named matters of "culture" as "politics". The two are inclusive sets... they share a certain fraction of the two circles. We need to start calling matters of "culture" something else, and not "politics". They are two entirely different things, and by getting them confused, we have virtually ruined the political process in the western world. Islamic civilization is also coming apart as the populace become confused over the meaning of "religion" and "politics".
So here is presented a basic starting point to define and express properties of "Culture" and specifically the process of "Conditioning" those who would join a culture.
What is the danger of deliberate acts of "conditioning" of the masses in order to form a political empire?
The first thing that jumps out at me is that people today seem to be getting a lot of conditioning for the notion that they are limited; limited in resources, land, opportunity and possibilities.
I think that this conditioning is driven by culture. I don't think there have ever been a big bad organization anywhere at any time that says "let's go out and condition the sheep to march into the slaughter shed". I think rather that whatever premise the culture "buys into" slowly becomes dogmatic in establishing "taboo". For example, if you are a Mormon, it is taboo to state that the entire basis of the religion is to say that Joseph smith is literally the flesh and blood brother of Jesus, and once he was "martyred", he immediately got sent to a planet just like earth to "die on the cross" for that planets beings... who are literally his brothers and sisters and that eventually EVERYONE in the universe can do this same thing! That is the Law of Eternal Progression, but when we Mormons go through the temple, we make promises "not to talk about it"... so now I'm going to hell.... dang it.
The part that remains a big part of my life is the taboo of silence. There are thousands of taboo's in every culture. But so conditioned are we that we generally refuse to even think that something has messed with our heads.
I think that the conditioning of "scarcity" is a lie. There are no limits. We have the frickin' UNIVERSE to use up and consume. Conditioning to the notion of "limits" is the root cause of PETA and GREENNESS and GLOBALWARMING and indeed all the strange new "cultures of limits".
Cultures are shaped and grown from concensus. The thing about the human village and our tribal heritage is that we are not logical in the development of culture. We tend to be influenced not by events and action, but by STORIES and listening to stories well told.
Have you ever listened to a full speach by a "good" politician? They don't drone on about policy. They don't spew figures and numbers. They don't use charts to prove a point. What they do is tell us stories. They tell about the journey and the things they saw on the journey while we sat at home tending the crops. They bring us tales of things that are just out of sight over the hill and beyond the lakes where we fish.
Culture is formed by those who can best tell stories that suit our needs.
Unfortunately, our most critical need is "safety and security". So in our modern culture, as technology increases, we demand more and more safety and more and more security. By definition, this eliminates any easy movement into the unknown. The unknown is dangerous.
The funny thing about our current storyline is that so called "liberals" are pushing harder for the elimination of change than the so called "conservatives". As a simple example I will put forth the nutty push for "universal health care". There are those conservatives who see it as just another effort to create a "nanny state". But I would argue that it goes much deeper than that. I say that we have created a culture of "safety", where people... no matter how irrational it is... actually BELIEVE that governments can make them safe and healthy just by enacting laws! Unbelievable! But that is what we have come to.
Conditioning is a valuable tool, but the above example should demonstrate how dangerous it is. If it doesn't, then I rest my case. If it doesn't, then indoctrination and conditioning obviously has erased the ability to think.
Or does anyone really think that "adding ten years" to the average life actually makes us safer in any way?