The Past is the Present

                When making decisions, one can only rely on what he or she has experienced (disregarding communication through society).  Mary cannot make a decision based on what Alice knows without Alice telling Mary what happened.  Based on this limitation, one can safely assume that any choice is based off of experiences in one’s past.  When one considers this, it brings a whole new light to the term “The past determines the future.”  As we live out our early lives, our young minds are conditioned by our experiences.  Some people are conditioned to like certain activities, and others are likewise conditioned to appreciate other activities.  In the same matter, our views on society are marginally influenced by our pasts.  Different factors, like parenting, hate crimes, and many other things can all have an effect on what we believe later on in life, and how we view the world around us.

                For example, take two intellectual twins.  If one grows up in the slums of one of the world’s biggest cities, he will be inclined to appreciate what he has, rather than wanting for more than he deserves.  However, if his intellectual twin were to have a life settled in the pleasant country, thriving on a millionaire’s budget, his views of materialism might be a little less stringent than his counter-part’s.  On the whole, we can apply this to nearly all facets of society and perspectives in general.  When a child grows up being the victim of hate crimes, he is being conditioned, one way or another, to believe one thing or another.  If a child grows up with Republican parents all his life, he is going to be inclined to view the Republican side of any argument to be the most logical, because they hearken back to the methodology of the problem that their parents instilled in them while they were young.

                Granted, if someone were to completely detach themselves from the problem and look at it objectively, meaning that all past experiences were rendered null in the deciding of the problem, then it is possible that the past of a person could not influence the decisions that are being made in the present.  After all, even though the past is a significant factor in our present decisions, it, by no means, sets our choices in stone.