Why do they not travel throughout the earth so that they may have hearts to understand and ears to hear? For it is not the eyes that are blinded, but the hearts in the breasts that are blinded.
This verse from the Holy Quran (Surah al-Haj, 22:46) tells us that there is a blindness more pervasive and more subtle than the blindness of the eyes.
There is a more insidious deafness than that of the ears.
It is the blindness and deafness of the heart and mind – born of carelessness, indifference, and blindly following others.
What causes this omnipresent, though unnoticed, blindness?
This is the result of what we might call social hypnosis – a state of being where the individual’s intellect is asleep in acquiescence to everything that society dictates or suggests, although he feels like a free and independent agent.
It is society that creates this hypnotic state, plunging the people into a profound oblivion that leads them to succumb day after day to all its suggestions, burdened by its influence from cradle to grave. We are lulled into a state of intellectual sleep by the unquestioning acceptance of customs, traditions, norms, and conventional wisdom.
The customs and traditions of society, and the unquestioned assumptions it upholds, act as a sedative on the intellect, which only a few manage to ignore. This societal sedation has a paralyzing effect on intellectual development.
Those who fall under its sway cannot formulate any idea outside the limits of what society suggests. Society—whether through its control of the media, its pervasive cultural presence, its network of values, its accumulated parables, or the authority of its customs, habits, and traditions—has the power to close the mind and obstruct independent thinking.
This prevents people from verifying the truth about the world around them and about Allah. It’s a kind of heedlessness into which people in society fall. You see them walking, driving their cars, holding conversations, eating, drinking, and participating in all sorts of activities. Yet, they are like intellectual sleepwalkers or people under hypnosis. Their perception is dulled.
People’s environment and cultural norms influence their daily routines, reactions, feelings, and even their most intimate concerns, as if they were operating under remote control. However, as far as they are concerned, their thoughts are their own, and they make independent decisions.
This social hypnosis is omnipresent, influencing a person day and night. The person is unaware of it. They don’t know that their behavior conforms to societal expectations, regardless of current fashion. They feel perfectly free, that they do what they want and think whatever they want.
He assumes that his attitude toward life, the assumptions he holds, his philosophy, and his religious beliefs are his own. In this way, he is defeated twice. First, he is defeated by his submission to pervasive social hypnosis. Second, he is defeated by his ignorance.
He might even believe that conformity is something noble, something that spares him the fears and insecurities born of being different or alone. He goes out, struggles, hopes, dreams, and desires. Yet, if he paused for a moment to reflect, he would realize how trivial and undervalued so many of the things he actually strives for are.
However, societal expectations and the persuasive nature of its daily cultural imperatives propel it forward. People’s perspectives and diverse aspirations are so intertwined with social expectations that it feels as if their hopes and tastes have been laid out for them in a painting.
Education, the media, and other influences dictate to people what they should and shouldn’t like, what attitudes they should have, and what opinions they should express. People become victims of these collective expectations and lose the ability to think critically for themselves.
From childhood, they accept as correct and true what they are told. As they mature, they persist in accepting what they are accustomed to accepting, all the while believing they understand things for themselves. Society encourages people, through every means of persuasion and intimidation at its disposal, to refrain from any creative thought.
A person, to the extent that they free their mind, succeeds in thinking their own thoughts. Conversely, the more their mind is subjected to the hypnotic influence of society, the more their intellect is impaired and the less their thoughts are truly their own.
The phenomenon of social hypnosis exists in every closed and insular society or social group. A person in such a society or group will, to a large extent, be a victim of this phenomenon.
It can be observed that the more a person’s cultural experience is broadened, challenged, and renewed, the more their mind is liberated and their perception becomes clearer. Their cultural perspective then becomes their own. The influence of social hypnosis on them weakens, and its dangerous consequences are reduced.