A mathematician is a device for turning coffee into theorems.
And we also suck in messages from everything from the television, to advertising, to marketing, etc. These are hugely powerful forces that define what we want and how we view ourselves. When we're told that banking is a very respectable profession, a lot of us want to go into banking. When banking is no longer so respectable, we lose interest in banking. We are highly open to suggestion.
The truth will set you free. But first, it will piss you off.
"In the end, we are all just stories, and the best we can hope for is to be a good one."