Creativity Quote by Ruben Blades

Blades’s line lands with the plainspoken force of someone who’s watched “personal choice” get overstated into mythology. “A lot of times” immediately downgrades the heroic narrative: he’s not claiming we’re robots, just admitting how frequently our decisions arrive pre-shaped. The key verb is “conditioned,” a word that smuggles in training, repetition, and reward systems. It’s not simply that we’re influenced; it’s that the environment teaches us what to want, what to tolerate, and what to call normal.

Coming from Ruben Blades, a musician whose salsa has often doubled as reportage, the phrase carries a social diagnosis. Latin American urban life, migration, class stratification, and political pressure all make “what’s around you” more than vibes; it’s infrastructure. Neighborhood, media, school, work, and state power don’t just frame your options, they frame your imagination of what options exist. The subtext is a critique of fatalism and excuse-making at once: yes, context shapes you; no, that doesn’t absolve you from noticing the shaping.

It also functions as a quiet defense of empathy. If people are “conditioned,” then moral judgment without curiosity becomes lazy. Blades is pointing toward the moment where awareness becomes agency: once you can name the conditioning, you can start rewriting it. For an artist, that’s a mission statement. Music becomes a counter-environment, a way to change what’s “around you” by changing what’s in your head and, eventually, what you demand from the world.