http://social.rollins.edu/wpsites/mclaren/files/2013/04/oppression.png
In the mentioned quote by Bandura, it is affirmed that he believed that people
reflect and gain control of their behaviors; however, it also recognized that
our standards of behavior were all copied—something that sounded contradictory
to the first statement. If we use our own brains to think, then how did
it become that how we think is just a product of how our model
thinks? Assuming this is true, these questions become necessary to
ask: How sure are we
that how we reflect is not influenced by anyone? Whose standards of behavior
are we subscribing to? Have we been in chains with someone else’s
identity all our life? Do the models, or rather people with prestige and power,
have the right to influence the behavior of their followers? Is
our freedom of thought being compromised? The
social cognitive theory tells us something—that oppression can easily find its
way to the road of learning. If oppression is present at the starting
point of learning, how can we stop it when it is already there in the first
place? The best thing that we can do, if this happens, is to unlearn what
we have learned, and reflect in order to find the things that we could stand up
for—something that truly defines us, at least as we perceive it, in order to
have our own truth. Doing this, however, is just difficult and somewhat
unrealistic.
Doing a thing frequently
makes up our truth. If we mostly learn by following a model, we tend to
make some, if not all, beliefs and actions of our model, our own beliefs and actions, which when we
repeatedly do, whether or not we get rewards, for as long as we are able to
convince ourselves that we are good with those beliefs and actions, these
things become our realities and truths. Other person’s truth becomes our
truth, and once we made up our truths, it becomes hard to dismantle. For
instance, Rodrigo Duterte, a presidential candidate, is undeniably charismatic
to the masses (at least to my belief). He has prestige and power—someone who
could be looked up to by the youngsters because of his audacity, humor, and
undaunted actions against the law offenders. If a Jose, a teenager,
admires Duterte so much and makes him his model, he consciously and
unconsciously, over the days, will probably adopt Duterte’s behavior, such as
his ill justification of extrajudicial killings and the latter’s profane
words. Over time, Jose will make Duterte’s justifications his own until
these become his truth. It is hard to say whether this is a good thing or
a bad thing, because we all have our own perceptions of what is good and what
is bad. Nevertheless, it is still important to note that modeling can be
a medium for something that might be bad for other people.
