How the Inner Self, Tradition, and Technology Are Clashing, and What We Can Do About It

Everything Is Changing — And It's Happening Fast

There’s a kind of hum beneath the surface of life right now.
 

• Our traditions are being questioned.
• Our politics are becoming polarised.
• Our technology is evolving faster than our values can keep up.
• And it’s not just happening over generations anymore, it’s happening within our lifetimes and often, within the same families.

It’s no wonder things feel tense.

Why Beliefs Collide (And Why It Hurts So Much)

Beliefs aren’t just ideas. They are our architecture.
They are the unconscious scaffolding that holds up our identity, our relationships, and our sense of safety in the world. So when someone challenges a political, religious, scientific, or cultural belief, it doesn’t feel like a debate. It feels like a threat. A destabilisation of our source code.

And because many of us were raised with a deep, subconscious fear of being wrong, of not being good enough, we react. We defend. We resist. Not because we’re stubborn or close-minded, but because our nervous system feels under siege.

We don’t just inherit beliefs. We inherit how to hold them. And more often than not, we were never taught how to let them go gracefully.

Programming, Patterns, and the People Who Raised Us

Most of our foundational programming, our beliefs, behaviours, and emotional habits, come from our early environment: parents, teachers, community, and culture.

We learn how to respond to challenges by observing how conflict was handled in our household. We understand what’s “normal” from what was modelled to us, even if what was modelled involved misattunement, suppression, or silence.
We absorb ideas not only from school or home, but also from media, technology, gaming, advertising, and now… artificial intelligence.

This is not about blame. It’s about bringing awareness to how unconscious our conditioning often is and recognising that unless we examine it, we’ll continue to repeat it, personally and globally.

The Real Work of Growth: Reclaiming the Right to Question

So, how do we move through this accelerated, conflicted, transitional time with more grace?

Not by holding on tighter. Not by convincing others they’re wrong.
But by doing the most courageous thing we can do: Re-evaluating our own beliefs.

That doesn’t mean abandoning what matters to us. It means becoming curious about where these beliefs came from, why they’ve lasted, and whether they still serve us in this new context.

This is inner work. But it’s also relational, cultural, and collective.

And in the next part of this blog, we’ll explore some very real tools that help us do this:

• Reflective coaching (without shame)
• The wisdom of conflict resolution from Rudolf Steiner
• What “inner child” (aka inner-self) work really means, without the clichés
• And a short, powerful set of questions to begin this process