Has it ever seemed obvious to you that society influences you? It definitely plays a big role in your beliefs: what you consider deviant or not. For example, we are socially conditioned to behave in a certain way and have similar intuitions about controversial topics to avoid violating social norms. In Robin Lakoff's article, “From Greece to Iraq, Wartime Power,” and John Berger's essay “Hiroshima,” the concept of social conditioning led Americans to suppress the reality of things and consider them justifiable without recognizing that war is a form of murder. Robin Lakoff is a professor of linguistics at the University of California at Berkeley and author of The Language War. He published an article in the New York Times on May 18, 2044 titled "From Ancient Greece to Iraq, the Power of War in Wartime." His purpose in writing the article was to provide a snippet from his book, in which he argues that using nicknames makes it easier for someone to kill another human being because it makes them seem inferior. Lakoff uses examples such as: “In World War I, the British gave the Germans the nickname “Jerries” (Lakoff 15). Therefore, it makes it easier for soldiers to kill their enemies. John Berger is a European writer, artist and intellectual. He published “Hiroshima,” which first appeared in 1981 in the journal New Society, and later in his essay collection The Sense of Sight in 1985. He argues that we should look beyond the statistics to see the reality of the events that occurred during the bombings. of Hiroshima. As Berger stated, “I refrain from giving statistics: how many hundreds of thousands dead, how many injured, how many deformed children” (Berger 11). The... center of the card... the head. As soon as I saw this miserable scene with the pitiful little girl, I hugged the girl next to me and cried with her, telling her that her mother was dead” (Berger 11). Many people lost their lives and their families. They were shocked and had to suffer fatal burns and radiation sickness from the bombing. Berger acknowledged, “My friend in the United States looks beyond the nuclear holocaust without considering its reality” (Berger 12). In fact, most Americans consider the events justifiable because it ended the war and they got their revenge. To conclude, Americans suppress reality. In order to progress, they must take a step in a positive direction and recondition themselves to take responsibility for their lives. Furthermore, they must recognize that they are socially conditioned to end repression altogether.