I feel as though the Looking Glass self concept by Cooley is what dictates our self concept and perception of others. For instance, in the video about the dolls, the children identified who was good or bad based upon their race. The societal and cultural messages that these children received affected the way in which they viewed themselves and others. These messages remain in our subconscious minds throughout our lives, even though we are able to cognitively understand that certain races are not bad or good based on their skin color. We no longer make those generalizations as adults, but surely they remain in the subconscious mind. We only use 10% of our brains, and the other 90% is the subconscious mind, this concept of the looking glass self is really everything. I do believe that I think about what others think of me constantly, and not what I actually feel about myself. It's a daily task for me to "weed" through my thoughts and figure out which ones are mine, and which ones are there because of subconscious conditioning from society. Sometimes I wish society didn't exist, and then what would I feel about myself, truly? I think we would always compare ourselves to others around us anyway. There will always be society as long as there are human emotions and differentiation between people to make comparisons about.
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