Hidden Ways Society Shapes Your Reality and How to Awaken from the Programming, with Aaron Scott | #548

What if the “you” chasing success was never truly you, but a product of systems shaping how you think, feel, and live?

In this deep and eye-opening conversation, Aaron Scott, former Wall Street professional turned writer and consciousness explorer, reveals how education, finance, and societal systems subtly mold our perceptions and identities. Together with Agi, he explores how recognising these hidden influences can help you reclaim your personal sovereignty and start living from awareness instead of conditioning.

• Discover how modern institutions like education and finance condition your sense of self and success.
• Learn the first practical steps to break free from unconscious programming and begin living with inner autonomy.
• Understand how questioning inherited beliefs can reconnect you with your authentic power and purpose.

Listen now to awaken from societal conditioning and take your first conscious step toward reclaiming your true self.

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KEY POINTS AND TIMESTAMPS:

00:00 - Why this episode matters

02:03 - Meet Aaron Scott

03:35 - Aaron’s wake-up call from Wall Street

09:14 - How education conditions identity

17:51 - The illusion of value in finance

24:48 - From theory to action: where to start

26:00 - Speak with your wallet: practical steps

30:34 - How to connect with Aaron

36:43 - Parting message: question everything

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MEMORABLE QUOTE:

"Give yourself a break, trust yourself, and remember that life isn’t a mountain to conquer—it’s a journey meant to be lived and learned from."

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VALUABLE RESOURCES:

Aaron's website: https://www.theaaronscott.com/

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Coaching with Agi: https://personaldevelopmentmasterypodcast.com/mentor

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🎙️ Want to be a guest on the podcast?

Message Agi on PodMatch: https://www.podmatch.com/member/personaldevelopmentmastery

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Personal development interviews exploring key principles of personal development, self improvement, self mastery, personal growth, self-discipline, and personal improvement — all supporting a life of purpose and fulfilment.

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Transcript

Agi Keramidas

In this episode, you will hear about hidden ways society shapes your consciousness, your reality, and how to awaken from the programming and reclaim your inner sovereignty. Welcome to Personal Development Mastery, the podcast for intelligent, busy professionals who have achieved success but feel something's missing and are seeking clarity, purpose, and fulfillment. Each episode helps you grow by inspiring aligned action through practical insights you can actually use.

I am your host, Agi Keramidas. Join us every Monday for an insightful conversation with a guest and each Thursday for a shorter episode where I reflect and share with you. This is episode 548.

If you are looking to understand how society shapes your consciousness and learn how to reclaim your inner sovereignty, this conversation explores how our education, financial, and other systems condition us and how awareness can set us free. If you want to live with greater authenticity, then this episode is for you. Before we start, if you resonate with the topics we discuss on the podcast and you are navigating a transition or perhaps feeling cold to a next chapter that is more purposeful and intentional, I offer one-to-one coaching and mentoring to help you get clear, reconnect with what truly matters, and move ahead with confidence.

To explore what that could look like for you, visit personaldevelopmentmasterypodcast.com slash mentor or just tap the link in the show notes. Now let's get started. My guest today is Aaron Scott.

Aaron, you are a writer, speaker, and podcast host focused on exploring how our dominant social, economic, and institutional systems shape human consciousness and how awakening from these inherited structures allows us to reclaim our inner sovereignty and consciously reshape our reality with awareness. Aaron, welcome to the show. It's such a pleasure to have you with me today.

Aaron Scott

Thank you so much for having me. I'm excited to be here.

Agi Keramidas

And so am I, and I'm excited to explore with you today how to awaken, if you want, from this societal conditioning, all this that I briefly described in your introduction. Before we go there, what I would like to start with, you have, from what I read, in-depth knowledge of economic systems, healthcare, education, spirituality, religion, metaphysics, and more. I would collectively put them all and say a big rabbit hole there.

So in this rabbit hole that you have followed over the years, was there a significant milestone or a moment that what you realized changed everything afterwards for you?

Aaron Scott

Yeah, for sure. I think that when you speak with a lot of people who are kind of on a spiritual path, if you will, I think that you'll find that there was some kind of acute moment or maybe even a traumatic situation or something that kind of incited, if you will, a kind of revelation. I think it's quite obvious that for anybody, and for yourself, I'm sure, that in order to really kind of come to any deep conclusions about things, we're sort of tethered to our own experience, right?

We're tethered to our own perception, our own introspection. It's through, naturally, it's through our own lens that we view and digest the world and our consciousness, right? So for me, it was kind of obviously unique in that I had been working on Wall Street for close to 20 years, close to two decades.

And I kind of set out after university on this kind of mission to be successful. I had great ambition. I was following this path of, maybe I didn't quite understand the path in depth or certainly in breadth at the time, but I was really on this path rooted in indoctrination and rooted in ideology and structure, morality, all these different kind of zinger words.

But I was kind of propelled on this path and I kind of knew at the time, and as I was kind of going through my career, that I would have to sort of sever a part of myself to accommodate, if you will, this path, these desires, this ambition, and to succeed, quote unquote, succeed in this professional capacity, right? So, but again, as I kind of went through my life, I experienced kind of like a chipping away, if you will, of my constitution, of my true self. And I kind of woke up, I'd say like two years ago or so, and I kind of like didn't recognize myself.

And my personal relationships had withered or decayed. I wasn't spending time with my family. I kind of like was viewing things from a utility only perspective.

I was just kind of, again, I was disoriented. And I kind of said to myself, I kind of like looked at myself and I said, listen, you can continue on this path. But in two years or three years, you're just not going to recognize who you are anymore.

And you're going to, now you have kind of a choice consciously to decide if you want to continue down this path and go where this naturally will digress to. And I said, it's time to change. It's time to kind of stop and understand what the heck happened, how I got here and grow.

Because I wasn't growing. Maybe my bank account was growing, but I wasn't growing personally. I wasn't reaching new heights eternally.

My relationships weren't evolving to where they should have been evolving to given kind of like my time with people. There was just stagnation everywhere. I didn't quite understand it because I was doing everything I was supposed to do, right?

So I kind of had this moment. And again, I kind of took a leap into the unknown. And I said, I want to take my accumulation of years of experience, of knowledge.

I also was, I was a philosophy and economic theory major. So I was really, I was always anchored in kind of a deep desire to understand, to understand the intricacies of, you know, really the bedrock of society, if you will, right? Of academia, what have you.

So, and I decided to kind of take that leap. So that's, this is kind of the amalgamation of this deviation.

Agi Keramidas

I took, I highlighted from what you said, the phrase leap into the unknown that you said towards the end. And earlier on, you used also the phrase conscious choice, which I also highlight because I believe it is important. There was something that you said, and I want to connect that with our topic today.

You used the phrase that the life, or it is tethered to our experience. I think that's how you say it. So our perception of, you know, the, I call it life, you know, the reality, whatever we perceive around us.

And you say that the systems that we live in are designed to shape that, our perception of truth or reality. Can you share with us so that perhaps someone listening can start to understand straight away, some of the most powerful ways that this happens, that these systems influence how people see themselves, how people see reality?

Aaron Scott

Yeah, sure. And I think that this is kind of, this is a real fundamental question, right? And it kind of, it kind of, it kind of strikes at the root of my general inquiry, which is, you know, I would say that the systems that we occupy are really kind of anchored to maybe regional ideological constructs or religion, depending on kind of where you are globally.

But kind of the main underlying current, I think, in the modern world is anchored to a lot of the kind of Western hegemonic ideals, the ideology rooted in liberalism or capitalism. I think this is kind of the prevailing force in the modern age in many ways. And the, you know, religious systems, the spiritual belief systems have kind of taken a backseat to economy in many ways.

So, but, you know, in the Western world, certainly in the United States and definitely in parts of Europe, we are brought into an education system as children, right? We accept it blindly. We don't look at it for what it truly is.

In truth, it is a well-structured, conscious indoctrination system. We in the States use what's called the Prussian model, which there is a long documented history of what that is, but it was adopted by industrial capitalists at the turn of the 20th century, guys like Rockefeller, Carnegie. And it was done so to create and sculpt docile workers who would be able to follow orders, who would be focused on performance, who would be focused on achievement.

And we see this manifest through classrooms that children's curiosity is curbed where they are boxed into seats for seven hours a day at very young ages where they're taught to digest information and regurgitate it. And depending on how well that is regurgitated, you are given gold stars or grades. You are taught to bend to authority where you look up to an authority figure who dictates to you.

There is no iterative learning process, right? So this is the underlying psychological scaffolding of the education system. Now, certainly there's an argument about what you learn in school has absolutely no relevance to the practical world, which is in many ways true.

I certainly think that. I think that that argument can be made as you kind of go up later in life, which is another interesting kind of conversation. But I kind of like to look deeper here.

And what people don't realize is how this metastasizes into adulthood, into identity, into sense of self, into purpose, if you will, right? And again, this isn't a commentary on just kind of like the conspiratorial framework of an education system because in truth, it's well-documented what the purpose was, right? There are statements made by these sculptors that, again, are overt sort of declarations of what the intention was.

It was just to support industry, right? And we made – in the Industrial Revolution, we made a conscious shift nationally to focus on economic expansion, right? So, this was supposed to accommodate that expansion.

This is about grownups who are standing at the apex of success and on top of a mountain holding the keys to three homes and two cars and six pairs of Gucci loafers or whatever measure of success that they've declared to be, that they sanctified, right? And to say to them, this is not of your own sort of autonomous thought. This isn't some revelatory experience that you've harnessed by – through your deep intuition.

This is a sculpted framework that you've adopted unconsciously and that you have unwittingly decided to be the path in life but haven't fully been the one making that decision the whole time. And so, it's about exposing to people what the true kind of foundational scaffolding of consciousness, of identity, of sense of self, of purpose and you find that really, really kind of an acute level with the education system because it's so – it's also such a powerful force. I mean think about it.

You're – in the States, you're in school from kindergarten through – for 13 years of your life, right? I mean this is a massive portion of your time. It's also – these are your formative years.

So, and what – and very quickly, I've been talking a lot but what this exercise does is that when you're able to peel back the layers of this onion, when you're able to look deeper, it brings back sovereignty. It is a hugely empowering process because you recognize that you are not the fruits of your labor. You are not the utility that you offer.

You are not the performance. We perform all day long to accumulate. We – I mean there's many sort of different tangents we can go on to discuss this but I kind of – at an extremely deep level and actually metaphysical level, we go – we can look and see that we aren't even our emotions or our thoughts.

We experience them. But again, it's about reclaiming identity. It's about reclaiming sense of self and when you can do that, when you can detach, when you can disidentify, right?

It is – this is the core in my opinion of unleashing consciousness, of bringing yourself back to truth, to source, to divinity, to the true nature of the human experience and if you can do that, you open up a whole new reality. You unshackle yourself in many ways from the burdens that you've inherited. So anyway, that was a lot but that's kind of I think a very strong example of one of these sort of societal structures or systems that literally sculpt and create consciousness.

Agi Keramidas

It certainly does and I'm glad that you started with the system of education because it – everyone or most people go through that process and there was something that you said that I believe it's important, I will repeat it with my own words, was that when you start realizing that you have been conditioned or programmed in a way or you use the word indoctrinated, when you start realizing that, it is empowering. You start to regain your sovereignty.

I think that's how you said it. I think that's a great first step to question these things rather than accept them for a fact. This is a very good way to understand how a huge institution like education and changes or shapes better our perception of reality and I want to hear about another one which probably is shaping every single person's perception of reality and you've worked in that field for 20 years as you said and that is the financial institution, the financial system in which we all, certainly someone listening to this podcast, operates in that. I would really like to hear your insights about how that particular institution has shaped our perception of reality and perhaps we can go deeper into that and see whether there's something that we can do about it.

Aaron Scott

Yeah. Well, I think there's a few different places to go with this. I will start on kind of maybe a larger macro level where we can look at the economic capitalist model, if you will, and what we find is and certainly late stage capitalism which we're experiencing now, we find a complete perversion, a complete sort of – I use this word a lot because I think it really kind of hits the nail on the head but a complete metastasis of economy into what I call sacred institutions where – again, when everything is for sale, nothing is sacred, right?

Where we are – where everything is about profit, nothing has meaning, right? So – and I also – a quick kind of colloquial that I use a lot is we are flooded with information but we're starving for meaning. This is a separate discussion but in any event, if you look at how capitalism and this kind of glorification of money and again, it can go – we can kind of push it into this construct of utility and performance and things of that nature.

But we have a medical system, healthcare system in the states. Certainly, it operates globally where these institutions are supposed to care about curing disease. Instead, we care about treating symptoms, right?

The focus is on profit for the pharmaceutical companies, profit for the institutions. The FDA is hugely corrupt. The – I mean they're just massive examples of artificial flavors, flavorings be allowed to persist into food because it's the best interest of the food company.

It's cheaper for them. There's less oversight.

Agi Keramidas

Aaron, I will interject now because rather than going into the healthcare and all going to different systems altogether, I would like perhaps to direct more specifically with the financial institution. More the way that we perceive things rather than how that limits our own perception or perhaps restricts us from regaining or disidentifying as you would say. Keep us locked.

Aaron Scott

Sure. Well, I think that first of all, I think that the – interestingly enough, no one has sort of taught economic or financial literacy ever unless you really focus on it either professionally or in kind of university. That's not by accident.

I will also say that the nature of the financial services arena from a capital markets or from a bureaucratic vantage point, things are not as complicated as they seem. It's really just sort of – it's really kind of the most acute example of special interest getting whatever they want, right? This is really kind of backed by the underpinning of really the global financial system, which are central banks.

Central banks historically, especially in the States, they were the biggest kind of – you weren't even allowed to say the word because they were just these toxic, parasitic kind of entities that preyed on people and kind of really allowed power structure to persist and really rule over people. People don't kind of realize that these whole ideas are kind of like modern-day slavery. These are the – this is kind of the architecture of central banking and of kind of the financial system model.

What happens is we create a kind of like illusory idea of value really. If you look at fiat currency in the States, the US dollar, the US dollar has no value. In fact, it's not even – it's kind of declared on the actual note itself.

It says, promissory note. It's a debt instrument, right? We print money to push again policy.

We print money to support institutions or corporations or other kind of special interests who have assets, who are dependent upon certain inflationary and deflationary kind of policy decisions. These are not for the benefit of humanity, of human beings at large. We superficially inflate or again, deflate the currency based on these special interests, so in truth, the way that the actual monetary supply works, the monetary supply is basically the decision-making is pegged to the individuals who hold assets, who hold equity, whose interests again are served by those decision-making processes.

Guess what? The people who end up holding the bag are those without assets, without equity, who are on wage – who are serving wage labor, who don't have the ability to kind of like ride the coattail of what these policy decisions really dictate, right? This is the ecosystem we've created.

This is what – this is the engine of our quote, unquote, expansion. We have – I think globally, what is there like 300 plus trillion in global debt? I mean, what does that even mean?

There's abundance everywhere. Everything we need is prevalent all over the globe. What does this mean, 300 trillion?

Who do we owe it to and why do we owe it and what are the repercussions of not paying this back? I mean, it's – again, so we've created these sort of like – I call them synthetic constructs that we hold to be – that we hold to be sort of divine and that we sanctify. I talk about this in my book.

I talk about this sort of synthetic construct that we've overlaid into society, into the world to allow it to operate efficiently. But what it has done is it has really kind of suppressed life. It has suppressed the life force.

It has detached us from our true reality, right? Financial services and the financial structure of society is no different.

Agi Keramidas

Thank you for this explanation. I highlighted there the illusionary sense of value that we have and I think I will leave that to everyone's own interpretation of what that might mean for them. Aaron, I wanted to bring us to something more practical or more actionable now.

So, for someone listening who understands or is beginning to understand with this conversation more and realizes that there is a system that in a way we are trapped inside or they are trapped inside. But on the other hand, how does one start? So, my question to you is what is one or two perhaps small but meaningful actions that they can take to begin reclaiming that inner freedom that we talked about sovereignty in the beginning and all this.

So, I would like to hear some of your wisdom on that.

Aaron Scott

Sure, sure. You know, I think I didn't kind of get into this last, I was trying to really focus on the financial kind of scaffolding. The real kind of one of the biggest engines that's used in structuring economy and kind of keeping things on course is this idea of manufactured scarcity, where there is, again, we talked about this briefly, there's no, there's really abundance everywhere, there's no real scarcity.

But in order for power structure to maintain itself, we must manufacture scarcity, we must create a false sense of scarcity. Through that, we create value, right? This is where the value really comes from.

Now, it's really through the large corporations, companies across many different areas, you know, we can look at OPEC, for example, which is a cartel of, you know, eight of the largest owners of oil, they dictate the price of oil. It's not like some sanctified, you know, supply demand economic model. This is an illusion, right?

This happens across a number of different natural resources. But more practically, we can look at companies that not only manufacture scarcity, but that dictate the pricing of things and that force us to accommodate their model of value. We can look at large publicly traded companies that don't have the, again, don't have the best interests of humanity in mind, that are looking to increase shareholder value.

Again, the whole shareholder maximization model is one of the biggest cancers to the world because in that model, it's, I mean, literally, the model is whatever's best for the shareholder. So, you could, you know, you might have to, at an extreme level, you might have to kill, you know, tens of thousands of people. But if it's best for the shareholder, then that's what the right course of action is.

And again, when you're operating in economic systems, you have to kind of peg things to money. And for me, the best way to kind of regain sovereignty, to empower yourself is to speak with your wallet, right? It's to recognize with awareness, the operating system of a lot of these companies, whether they're utilizing sweatshops in Bangladesh, whether they're poisoning the food supply, and making a conscious decision to say, I will not support these companies because their structure, their operating system does not align with my values, with my ideology.

And if it means that I can't buy, you know, I can only buy two t-shirts instead of four t-shirts. Well, is that a trade that I'm willing to make, right? And I think most people, if they understood, on the level that I do, I mean, certainly they might have a few sleepless nights first, but eventually, you know, they would say to themselves, you know, this is a trade, this is a sacrifice I'm willing to make.

I don't want to live in a world where this is supported, where this is an okay way to structure economy. In addition to that, right, when people are, again, there are all these kind of buzzwords thrown out there. But people need to look at companies that use regenerative models, that care about the natural ecosystem.

And I'm not talking about buzzwords like climate change and, you know, global warming. Let's put that for a side, because there are a lot of issues with that. But I'm talking about, you know, companies that will, you know, just extract, extract, extract until there's nothing left, right?

Killing ecosystems, whether it's the fishing industry or the logging industry or, you know, whatever it is, where the end justifies the means at all costs, right? And it's about people becoming aware of how, again, this operates, and then with that knowledge, making a conscious decision to choose another company or another path. This is one strong way.

Agi Keramidas

That's great. Thank you. And that's, it is practical and things come to my mind, as the way you were saying it, I already started thinking about things that I could as a result of what you just said.

Aaron, this is a fascinating conversation. Before I start wrapping things up, I want us to, I want you to tell us how can the listener connect with you, find out more about you and your book?

Aaron Scott

Yeah, sure. Thank you. So I have a book that we have, we have like an official launch event coming up on the 13th.

I believe that Amazon released my book about a week early. So it's available now on Amazon. It will be distributed globally through to all English speaking countries, to like the brick and mortar bookstores as well.

So I'm very excited about it. It's a book called Before We Forget, The Guide to Personal and Collective Awakening. And in this book, I try to, you know, bring people back into their own understanding of spirituality and how it really serves as an undercurrent through the practical world, through their practical lives.

And this isn't about, you know, this isn't about God or religion. This isn't about these kind of concepts. It's really about a tangible hands on understanding of what the divine means, how it exists in the natural order through universal laws, through the real bedrock foundation of the natural world and our experience therein, right?

And I think through the book, it will reveal a layer of a better sense of self, of seeing how the systems around us push us in certain directions. And I think it will bring back a lot of sort of inner sovereignty and not only awareness to how they can look at themselves and live their lives a little bit differently. So that's certainly one way to connect with me.

I have a podcast as well. It's a content based podcast. It's on a guest host structure where I dive deep into sort of a lot of inherited beliefs.

I dive into a lot of the sort of, I think, incorrectly sanctified structures of our society that we hold, we place about value, talk about, you know, education systems at the, again, at the lower and also the higher education level with colleges and how these systems have really been perverted and how they don't serve humanity anymore. And yeah, I mean, I'm kind of like sparingly on TikTok and Instagram. I don't really, I don't really love that kind of like performative format, but I'm out there as well on TikTok, TheAaronScott and Instagram.

I think it's TheAaronScottOfficial. So yeah, I'm out there. Please feel free to connect.

I have a website, TheAaronScott.com. So yeah, that's kind of my blueprint right now. And I'm hoping to kind of build on this effort and spread awareness and push for this kind of evolution of consciousness.

I think that, I think that we don't grow as a society if we're dependent upon unknowingly systems scaffolding that structures our consciousness that we're, again, not aware of.

Agi Keramidas

What you just said about pushing for the evolution of the society reminded me the phrase that we are the ones we've been waiting for. So if we want this to happen, it is up to us. Aaron, I have also two quick questions that I always ask.

And the first one is, what does personal development mean to you?

Aaron Scott

Personal development to me means reconnecting with, you know, your true self. Many people don't ever, don't ever get to, right? They'll sense flickers of it from time to time throughout their life, but they're never kind of, they're never pulled back into who they are before the masks, before the performance, before the obligation, before the structure that society has told them to be, or the actor that it has told them to become, right?

So that to me is really what development looks like. And what you find in my belief is that when you get there, this is when you can really grow. This is when you can really say, look, this is me.

Now I'm going to decide who I am, who I want to be. This to me is personal growth. This is, this to me is personal development.

Agi Keramidas

And a hypothetical question, Aaron, if you could go back in time and meet your 18 year old self, what's one piece of advice you would give him?

Aaron Scott

That's a tough question. I haven't thought of this in a while. I would say, there's so many things I would say to him.

But I would say primarily, you know, give yourself a break, you know, take it easy. Trust yourself. And you know, don't look at life as this, this mountain that you're meant to climb and then stand on and reflect back on.

To look at life as, you know, an experiential thing where you are meant to live and learn as you, as you go, or you're meant to, you know, where you're meant to grow. This is really, in my belief, what life is about. It's not about, there are cliches, it's not about getting there.

It's about the journey there. This to me is like the truth. And to look at life, I would tell my 18 year old self, you know, to look at life any differently is such a waste on so many levels.

And it cuts yourself off from really the beauty of things. This to me is a one kind of crucial, in my opinion, also life hack.

Agi Keramidas

Aaron, I want to thank you very much for this engrossing conversation we had and to wish you all the very best with your book and your mission to, as you said earlier, to push for this elevation of human consciousness. I would leave it to you for your parting message, specifically what I would like you to leave us with is a message to the listener, someone who listened to us now for half an hour. What is one thing you would like to leave them with?

Aaron Scott

I would like to leave them with question everything. Not dogmatically, not with paranoia, but so that they, in doing so, you bring your individual and personal truth to the forefront. If you don't question what you've inherited, if you don't question, and I mean across the board, question your education, question your religion, question your sense of self, question everything, because it's not until you do that, that you truly, truly come into terms with your reality, with your clear sense of self.

And what you'll find is not necessarily a rejection of everything, but a increased enhanced clarity. And to me, it's better to live conscious with clarity, with awareness than to be sleepwalking through life.

Agi Keramidas

Thank you for listening to this conversation with Aaron Scott. I hope it has given you a fresh perspective on how to awaken from societal conditioning and reconnect with your true self. If this conversation inspired you or gave you something meaningful, consider supporting the show.

It's like buying me a coffee in return for the value you received. Visit personaldevelopmentmasterypodcast.com slash support, or just tap the link in the episode description. Until next time, stand out, don't fit in.