The State of Religion & Politics
Why I’m making this post
I get that this is going to be a controversial post, so I tried to make it as neutral as possible, while still keeping the essence of what I believe in, intact. Consider this to be the only time I am willing to speak about religion or politics publicly. Frankly, I cannot risk saying something, even jokingly, and end up offending someone I really shouldn’t have offended. That someone could even be a future employer down the line, possibly rejecting me for a slightly edgy joke I made on Twitter decades before. This fact is also the reason why I sometimes abstain from tweeting, commenting, posting, or even interacting on most social media when it comes to these sensitive topics. I went far enough as to delete some of my old posts made during my teenage years, where there was even a remote chance that a post could give an idea about my religious or political beliefs, or hamper my professional life in any way.
I’ve been keeping aware of my online behaviour and abstaining from getting into political/religious debates online for years at this point. It sometimes gets annoying to hold back your thoughts, especially for someone who is very extroverted. I’ve learnt from my past that it is definitely way better than running your mouth and alienating people. It took a while for me to bring myself to post this. I debated long and hard about whether this could come back to bite me. I even consulted others about it. I realised how stupid it was that this is the state we’re in, where I have to be fearful of expressing my thoughts. I had to cherry pick what thoughts I express to make sure I don’t offend anyone, while still expressing my beliefs. That’s when I decided to go ahead and post this. However, I still had to go back and delete some of the things from my first draft, which is disheartening. It’s easy to say we have freedom of speech and expression, but is it really true freedom of speech and expression, when I have to question every thought I am about to express and hold back saying what I believe in, in light of whether expressing such a thought could affect me negatively in the future, be it professionally or socially?
Religion
“Religion is a social-cultural system of designated behaviors and practices, morals, worldviews, texts, sanctified places, prophecies, ethics, or organizations, that relates humanity to supernatural, transcendental, or spiritual elements.”
That’s taken right off of Wikipedia.
Religions as constructs were first put in place by philosophers several millenniums ago. To put that into perspective, the scale of their civilisation could be compared more easily to hunter-gatherers, than to that of modern humanity. Almost all scientific insights and knowledge that have fundamentally changed our way of life were made within the last few centuries.
Human tendencies don’t change much with time. It becomes very evident that these constructs were put in place by philosophers to control the masses. Fear of the unknown, and fear of missing out. You can see how all it takes to control everyone, is to collude with others who are educated and can see through the lies, and instill fear via lies to those who aren’t. After that, whenever someone tries to rise up from the uneducated class, put them down as a heretic. Eventually, there will reach a critical mass of people who might be able to rise up, but they will still be kept in their place, due to fear of being ostracised.
The only reason that I have the privilege of making a post like this, instead of being punished for stepping out of line, is because in the last century, science has become mainstream. Governments and groups are more closely monitored and held accountable, and countries which emphasise freedom of speech hold the majority of the power and influence in the world.
The need for a social-cultural system such as religion in a day and age where information and communication is widely available is up for debate. In my eyes, it is sufficient to live our lives according to the information we have, and try to gain new information scientifically, instead of living our lives according to unproven faith, as that prevents us from living our lives in this world we’re currently in, to the fullest. Of course, we can’t be policing faith, people can believe what they want, and I have no problems with it, as long as they do not intrude on others’ liberty.
Politics
I first talked about religion, before talking about politics, because they’re very intertwined, but I won’t be getting into that for the sake of keeping things neutral. There is one word to describe what I hate about politics: Propaganda
All objectivety is thrown out the window when we start labelling things and people, and start using those labels as justification for beliefs or actions. Propaganda aids in labelling. The narrative can be so easily shifted with the right propaganda at the right time. Such a fragile system should have no place in our modern society. Our political beliefs should be well rooted in logic, and not influenced by propaganda.
I just find how easily people fall prey to propaganda to be very disheartening. Nothing related to politics is black and white, and there is always an otherside to the narrative. Be aware that you’re very likely in a propaganda machine, acting according to the information you have. The information you have could have very easily been cherry picked and fed to you by an external entity, whose true intentions are to decieve you in order to get their way.