We're all Conditioned
Everyday we’re being conditioned.
Not occasionally.
Not accidentally.
But every hour and every moment.
With every swipe of a screen.
Every reflexive glance at a notification.
The innumerable moments we find ourselves staring into the glow of a screen, almost without realizing how it ended up in our hands again.
We are becoming someone new - slowly, imperceptibly, but relentlessly.
Whether we call the people we love - or tell ourselves we’ll do it later.
Whether we are present with the person standing right in front of us - or whether our attention is elsewhere, fractured by the unceasing dings, buzzes, banners, and vibrations of modern life.
We are all being conditioned.
If I’m honest, I’m not happy with the way I’ve allowed myself to be conditioned.
I like to think of myself as disciplined.
Reflective.
Intentional.
I’ve spent years training my body and my mind for difficult things.
And yet, if I’m keeping score, I’m losing the daily battle of becoming more human and more of who I’m made to be.
This little device in my pocket - this glowing appendage - has more power over me than I’d like to admit.
Or to be accurate: I’ve given it more power than I should have.
I find myself going through the motions of life. At home. At work. Physically present, but often not there mentally, emotionally, or spiritually. I live a shallower life when I’m meant to live a deeper one.
And that gap - that distance between who I know I’m called to be and who I find myself becoming - creates a quiet ache. A low-grade dissatisfaction that never quite goes away.
Some describe this as the malaise of our time.
To make matters worse, it’s not only that I am suffering, but my family and my friends are affected by it too.
Being a founder and CEO of a venture-backed start-up in a new category of mental fitness is already hard.
Ask any founder who started something from nothing and they will tell you legions of stories of how difficult and at times miserable the journey has been.
But that isn’t what’s so hard about this.
The hard part is my wife and my kids know they only have a piece of me, not because of the job, but because of the power I allow the distracting devices to have over me.
The irony of being a tech CEO and struggling to fight the power that technology has is not lost on me.
What makes it worse is that I don’t feel weak in general.
I feel weak here specifically.
I have to confess I’m weaker than I’d like to be in my ability to defend myself against an onslaught of mechanisms and techniques explicitly designed to condition me into someone I don’t like and don’t want to become.
It’s like I’m playing defense all of the time, when in reality, I know I’m made to go on offense.
I suspect I’m not alone.
The Truth About The Human Condition
Once we accept that we’re being conditioned, the obvious question becomes unavoidable:
Conditioned into what?
The truth is we are constantly conditioned to believe lies.
The modern world conditions us toward unending distraction, ceaseless consumption, and the slow disintegration of what it means to be human.
It places idols in our pockets and calls them tools.
It promises fulfillment just one click away.
It whispers that we are limitless - then sells us things to numb us from the reality of our limits.
We are conditioned to believe that a little more money, influence, and productivity will finally satisfy us.
The lie we’re conditioned to believe: we can be gods unto ourselves.
And yet the irony is obvious.
If we were gods, we wouldn’t need more of anything.
More money.
More power.
More fame.
More consumption.
The very hunger reveals the lie.
This conditioning - imposed upon us and often unconsciously accepted - does not strengthen the soul. It weakens it. It leaves us distracted, disintegrated, and disappointed, something I call “the Disorder Loop” and will write more about in the future.
The truth of the human condition isn’t something we need to avoid or deceive ourselves about.
To be human is to experience four inescapable realities - what I call “The Four Fs”:
1. We are Finite: limited in time and space.
2. We are Fallen: we do not live as we know we ought.
3. We are Fallible: we do not know all we wish we knew.
4. We are Fragile: we will die.
Despite what the world tells us, these conditions are not constraints to be eliminated. They are truths to be lived within.
And they stand in stark contrast to God’s condition - “The Four Os”
• We are Finite; God is Omnipresent
• We are Fallen; God is Omnibenevolent
• We are Fallible; God is Omniscient
• We are Fragile; God is Omnipotent
Much of modern conditioning is an attempt to escape our humanity rather than inhabit it.
Conditioning for the Human Condition
As Marines, we conditioned relentlessly.
We trained responses until they became automatic - not to eliminate freedom, but to preserve life. Under stress, you don’t want to debate options. You want your body and mind to move with clarity, efficiency, and effectiveness.
A conditioned body reacts efficiently.
It conserves energy.
It follows learned pathways.
That’s true in combat, in the classroom, and within the contours of our everyday lives.
Conditioning itself is not the problem.
The problem is unintentional conditioning toward the wrong end.
So the central question of our time becomes this:
How can we condition ourselves intentionally?
What conditioning strengthens our capacity to become more human?
I long to love well.
I long to be present.
I long to create, contribute, and serve.
But those capacities wither under constant conditioning that keep me stuck in the Disorder Loop of distraction, disintegration, and disappointment.
To be human is to be relational. That requires attention, vulnerability, and love.
To be human is to be creative. That requires space, faith, and wonder.
To be human is to be imperfect. That requires acceptance, grace, and fortitude.
Human conditioning, then, must be conscious of who and what we are, coherent in the way we live out our values in everyday life, and lead to communion with others and God.
Properly employed, Human Conditioning should increase our fitness to be more human.
True fitness is not merely physical.
It is physical, mental, and spiritual.
Human conditioning must strengthen our physical, mental and spiritual fitness to become more human every single day. It must submit to the telos and terms of our lives and enable us to become who we are made to be, not reactively devolve into a machine.
Every day, we are becoming someone new.
The question is not whether we are being conditioned.
The question is whether we are willing to choose the terms - and the end - of that conditioning.
If we do not, the world will gladly choose for us.
In fact, it already has.
It will not condition us for depth, presence, love, or virtue.
Rather, it will condition us to continue drifting through life half dead rather than fully alive.
The invitation is simple - but not easy:
To condition ourselves for the human condition.
To become more fully who God made us to be.
One day at a time.