We do not control our thoughts, they just appear from nothingness.
These thoughts are not you, and you should not identify with your thoughts. The thoughts are an unconscious fabrication of the brain, and you are the observer of the thoughts.
We are what we feed ourselves. The knowledge and the choices we make. They keep echoing for as long as we live, and we get to guide all of it by shaping our routines to forge us into the person we want to become.
Not that's it's always practical, considering the limits of what society impose to us. But I do think it's all a construct and a feedback response amalgamation of everything we experienced in life.
We are just observers, until we realise we're not. I believe this can emerge spontaneously, but can also be influenced from the outside.
It's our task to raise consciousness of the masses so that they can, at some time, have the unconscious realisation that standing for our cause is the better choice.