Were I not so conditioned by my upbringing, I would have created a totally different reality for myself. This tenacity of belief about how things are, about the way things should be, has burdened me my entire life and I have been diligently working through it. 
      Dig- the factors that influence any one person's view of reality are so diverse and varied it borders on the phenomenal. It's a wonder that we as a species see eye-to-eye on most things, which we do, which lends credence to the theory of reincarnation (which to me is not a theory at all but merely common sense).
       Because, dig- how could we react so similarly if we hadn't had corresponding experiences? Maybe not this time around, but enough times to know. 

     Anyway, let's just focus on our present lifetimes. Talking to people, I am continuously amazed at how they grew up. Were they from a stable family? Were they only children or did they have siblings, and if so, what was their position in the family? First born, baby child, or somewhere in the middle?
     How far apart were the siblings in age from each other? Did they get along? Was it an all boy family, all girl, or was it mixed? 
     Were the parents married throughout their upbringing? Did they get divorced? Did one of them die? Were they raised by grandparents, aunts, or uncles? Did they move a lot? What did mom and dad do for a living?
      Where did they live? What were the neighbors like? Did they have neighbors? 
      Were the parents, one or both of them, abusive? Were they alcoholics, drug addicts, or criminals? Were the parents well adjusted professionals? Did they grow up in a mansion in the good part of town? 
      Were the parents role models that you absorbed every little nuance from, good or bad, because you needed to figure out how the world ran, or did you disregard them and go your own way, not tainted by what they said or did at all?
       To me, upbringing has a definite effect on kids, and it's pretty rare that you'll find a headstrong one that claims he or she wasn't affected.  We're ALL carrying stuff from the past is my view, and whatever we have created around us in the present is a result of that upbringing. Added to that are the current factors we are being continuously exposed to because you know that every time you get on the internet somebody somewhere in a secret lab is running an algorithm based on the choices you are making and is presenting you with an adulterated, custom-made webpage filled with ads for crap you happened to glance at briefly before realizing your mistake. Yikes!
      But, somehow we do it. We cope with all this social engineering and move forward. What else, really, CAN we do? Sign o' the times is we are data points, pixels on Google, Facebook, and Twitter's mosaic of reality. Will we eventually be just another flock of birds or school of fish turning on a dime because the media giants know our next moves?

      I doubt it. We are too messed up, each of us, to be able to predict because we have all been infected with viruses called our childhoods and we will react according to those hidden programs for as long as we are alive, most of us. No matter how much processing we do, books we read, or workshops we attend we'll still have those programs running. There is no blanket solution for us because there is no baseline from which to start.
     To take this premise even further- common sense, remember- my view is that these kind of programs have been running in us for a LONG time, since we were originally born into physical reality, and they've only been added to since then. 
     So..... 
      ...humans may be suggestable, yes, but are they controllable? I don't think so. 

     Case in point- the evangelical Christians that have aligned with the vainglorious orange guy have just found themselves at odds with a splinter group of evangelicals called the Red Line Evangelicals, the meaning of 'red line' being that certain bibles have words written in red that are the ones that Jesus spoke. I have to laugh and laugh at this. The Red Line Evangelicals ask themselves "What would Jesus do?" rather than "What does the orange guy want?".
      What prompted THIS? Upbringing! Dig- somewhere, at some time, the Red Line Evangelicals ALREADY experienced somebody like the great orange one and saw that guys like him were false prophets!