conditioning

My now friend M.F. showed us his beautiful and inspiring film "Tropico da Saudade: Levi-Strauss Journey to Amazonia", where he shows the visits of anthropologist Claude Levi-Strauss to the Nambikwara indians in the Amazon. M.F. has also lived for years with this amazonian tribe and he can tell many stories of their wisdom and amazing life close to Nature.

He ends his film with a quote from Levi-Strauss' book "Tristes Tropiques":

"Other cultures are perhaps no better than our own; even if we are inclined to believe they are, we have no method at our disposal for proving it. However, by getting to know them better, we are enabled to detach ourselves from our own culture. Not that our own culture is peculiarly or absolutely bad. But it is the only one from which we must free ourselves. We can only be free through others."

Such a powerful sentence. And after reading it on the screen, I thought one could exchange the word "culture" for the word "conditioning", and then the sentence would be something like:

"Other conditionings are perhaps no better (or worse) than our own; even if we are inclined to believe they are, we have no method at our disposal for proving it. However, by getting to know them better, we can detach ourselves from our own conditioning. Not that our own conditioning is peculiarly or absolutely bad. But it is the only one from which we must free ourselves. We can only be free through others."

(pictures from http://www.indiegogo.com/Return-of-the-Captured-Spirits)