What exactly does a Conditioner do?

Specifically those meant for use with hair - human hair. Yes - the Lever, Gamble and Proctor families will have their goons looking for me again but the truth shall set me free or something. To this day I stay confounded. Hence I have never purchased one. Perhaps the kryptonite, I mean keratinite in my hairy mass has some unique qualities inherited from the lowly follicle they arise from as I never had the need for my hair to be conditioned. I mean soaps or detergents I maybe get. You have some germs or grease or form of debris that you accumulated from the 'day in the life of' that you need to rid off before getting to bed. A good lather created by a surfactant (key ingredient of a lathering agent) will aid in removal of such detritus. Shampoos too are a stretch but maybe plausible given the need to get into the strands of hair. As such it is nothing more than a liquid soap. But then comes the mysterious cousin to all this - the Conditioner. Taking a page from an air-conditioner I can see what a conditioner ought to do - filter, moisten and modulate the temperature of the mass it comes in contact with i.e. condition it so that it is person friendly. People that condition their hair do not filter or modulate their hair temperature with this concoction far as I can tell. As far as mostening goes - well I never heard of a conditioner that did so without water so seems redundant to buy something in a bottle to moisten when the water that you need to go with it is doing just that if nothing else. Then of course there are varying kinds of these so called conditioners - to suit the varying scalps that are desirous of conditioning. Could a placebo be at work here? Everything from extra dry scalps and hair to those that are coarse haired to thin haired or worse lacking in hair have conditioners marketed to, bottled in exotic looking containers with caps and pumps to get you going with this fluid in copious quantities. Then again the irony of it is that all this money is being spent to tend the very thing that needs to be mowed (in either sex) since too much of a good thing is also not acceptable to the superficial society we live in. So on we go with our inane lives - conditioning then mowing then conditioning so we can mow again. It reminds me of a definition of a commuter - one that takes the train and comes back to shave again! Going back to dwell on this retarded blog one cannot help but think of many such adventures in marketing where the Dabur and Balsara families (back in the day) took a crack at peddling the likes of Shikekai to the Indian females imploring them to use this new found, well researched product to yield (frankly gross smelling) shiny black tendrils from their skulls. This was sure to appease the spouse as he came back from his commute it promised. I mean if the western world did not know of Shikekai (and we can safely assume they still do not) then were their scalps completely falling off? What of those in Australia? What were these indigenous people using? Clearly the scam continues to the day. The more exotic the berry or the nut that can yield a non pronunciable oil the more likely it is to create a Kesh Bonanza! Perhaps a subject of another blog but there are many such creations that I have frankly found borderline ridiculous to outright scams as in the pocket square that has to go in to the pocket of a suit, the latter also a marketed gimmic. Then there is the necktie which if all else fails has served the unique purpose of letting the occupier hang from it. So the question continues to vex the simple mind - what does this Conditioner do? Reminds me of 'Dhundte Rehe Jaoge' tag line famously touting a Lever branded 'Surf'actant back in India.