Ultimate Nihilism

Peer pressure, no matter what we like to think, exists for the sole purpose of maintaining a status quo
and deliberately detrimental and confusing expectations. It is ubiquitous in society and we are all
subject to it. This pressure forces us to act irrationally and act in alignment with the status quo upon
fear of being ostracized by society or death. Unfortunately, this conformity comes at a high cost to
the individual because he must give up his individual identity and values. At the same time, the
masses continue to be unaware that they have helped perpetuate the corrupt status quo that runs and
enslaves our society.

As a student, this status quo is imposed on me everyday as I am expected to fulfill the standards of
my teachers and peers. If there is a test, I must work to get an ‘A’ on it because that is what is
expected of a student. If there is a homework assignment, I am expected to finish it. If there is an
essay, I am expected to write it by a certain date and in a certain way. There is almost nothing that
says that I must learn the material that is taught in class. In fact, I doubt very many departments, save
for the English one, will be able to tell if a student has taught him or herself to a test instead of
understood the material. Personally, I doubt that students actually care to learn the material for the
sake of learning. In fact, I believe that most of the students care more for the grade.

I must admit that I am one of those students who will prefer the grade over the material. I am not
above the standards that are expected of me by my parents or teachers. I prefer to cheat the system
rather than succeed in it. This cannot be helped because I am only human and I like to form my own
opinion through critical thinking. Yet the system is what judges me and I forces me to abandon my
preferences in exchange for survival. To talk about a specific time when I have betrayed this would
be trying to find a hay in a needle stack. But for the sake of assignment, I will not turn this essay into
a philosophy oriented one.

The Delusions of Belief

Academia is so deluded to the point where we do not recognize the real world. We believe the entire
world to be whatever the teacher tells us it is because that is all we know. As students, we only
recognize success by the letter that is written at the top of our papers and on the report cards. In fact,
this view is imposed upon us because parents and teachers continually push for students to earn more
and more ‘A’s without caring whether or not the student has learned anything from the class. As a
result, humanity fails to recognize the real world, what happens in it, and therefore, is ignorant to how
the actions of the real world affect it. Humanity continues to become dumber and dumber for they
become unable to critically think about the world. Critical thinking is not required to get an ‘A’ in
any particular class (if anyone can point out specifically to what percent of a class’s grade is
composed of critical thinking, I will take this essay and tear it up) and as a result, we students reject
the skill. We become ignorant as a result of our desire to survive in a corrupt world that values a letter
over knowledge.
In an attempt to compromise for the people who are unable to understand the reality or simply cannot
understand what is happening in the real world, I will attempt to the best of my knowledge to make
this paragraph relevant to the sensationalist garbage people see on television. If you did a poll of your
class, you would find that more people watch The Jersey Shore on MTV than any program on any
given news network. Simply put, more people would rather watch teens with large silicone breasts
yell at men on steroids rather than educate themselves of the dilapidating political system. The only
reason Fox is the most watched news network is because they do not have objective news. They spin
their information with a conservative bias and the people accept whatever they see and hear on that
network at face value. In other words, Fox is thinking for these people and the people trick
themselves into thinking that whatever opinion is on Fox is their own. In reality, the opinion is
imposed upon them because the population refuses to critically think about the world as a result of
our misplaced values of education and knowledge.

In other words, what core beliefs do we truly have? What makes the population think that the
opinions and values they hold dear are their own?

Because of our refusal to think, we also cannot form outside beliefs other than the ones we hear about
on TV or our peers. A massive majority believes that human life is sacred, religion should be a guide
for life, capitalism is the best system ever, and the political system in which we live is really
bipartisan. But what makes these people think this way?

If life was so sacred, why were the Christians killing people left and right during the Inquisition and
the Crusades, especially considering that they are the group who emphasize the fifth commandment?
If religion is truly a guide for life, why do we have so many different religions and why does America
tend to discriminate against one Catholicism while accepting Protestantism? If capitalism is the best
system, why is the wealth gap between the rich and poor growing greater and greater in this country
and other countries such as Brazil? If the political system is truly bipartisan, why does Goldman
Sachs contribute to the Democrat’s and Republican’s campaigns? All this information is cannot be
found in widely watched shows like House, Two and a Half Men, or The Jersey Shore. This is all
information that can be found if one reads books, watches the news, or does independent research
about the world. People do not and therefore, they believe whatever the person next to him says is
true. People believe in all of these values because someone else said so without knowing why the
values are worthy, blindly accepting the truth because of it's sweet sound and popularity.

Imposed Beliefs

Now to the point of the essay: if all our views are imposed upon and installed in us, why would we
betray them? Why do we not take comfort in the idea that our ideologies are given to us on a silver
platter? Why do we not simply let the flow of society take us wherever? Why must we think about
the big questions in life?

The short answer: because certain beliefs validate our existence and we will accept whatever sounds
good to us. But your beliefs are limited because of a refusal to think outside the box.
To begin, let us examine at why we betray beliefs. Beliefs are used to determine an identity of a
person. Why does someone believe in a certain belief or value? It is because it validates their
existence. To prove this point, let us think in reverse: why does someone reject a certain belief or
value? Because it invalidates their existence. If someone believes in a belief, it validates their
existence. If a belief does not validate their existence, they do not believe in it (contrapositive).

An example of this is the corporations that run our lives. Since most of us believe in capitalism, it is
suitable that I write a paragraph attacking this value. If a company were to suddenly adopt the idea of
care and sympathy, the capitalist system would collapse. This is because capitalism is driven by
competition and the profit motive, two principles that are completely contradictory to moral
consideration. The only reason that we do business or work for society is because of money.
Corporations, because they are subjected to this system, inherently adopt this view of money's
importance as well. They will only perform an action because of a desire and opportunity for money.
If they decided that they should suddenly care about the wellbeing of the consumer, we would not see
corporations as so malicious. However, in exchange for that, corporations would be bankrupt.

For example, if a corporation decided to say “I have a decent car for sale but the person next door
sells a better car that is fuel efficient, safer, and cheaper,” they would not stay in business for too
long. Competition and the capitalistic system would force that honest corporation out of business
because they couldn’t earn money. People want the best and it is natural for people to go follow the
object or idea that benefits themselves the most. Therefore, corporations cannot afford to be honest
without going bankrupt and therefore, they will disappear. They will not adopt a policy of honesty
unless there is a law that will penalize the companies for not being honest (consumer protection is
designed to protect people from dishonest businesses) because honesty would kill the corporation.

If that does not make sense, let us try something a little more relevant to home. If a corporation
decided to dump toxic waste into the environment to save money, we view that as a violation of
morals because it is being irresponsible. However, if a corporation such as Walmart decides to do
business in a small town and drives other smaller shops out of business, do we see that as
irresponsible? If your job is replaced by a machine, do you call a corporation irresponsible? You
usually do not and simply accept the reality that a machine is replacing your job without a second
thought. But the belief and motive is the same: profit. A company will dump in the environment to
save money. A corporation will drive others out of business for the same reason. A corporation will
replace your job with a machine to reduce costs by downsizing and therefore you will loose your job.
This reality is just being viewed from different angles. The belief is the same and it is adopted
because it ensures the corporation’s survival.

If a corporation was honest and cared for others, it would not perform any of these abnormal or
inconsiderate actions. As said before, honesty would kill a corporation and therefore, even though
honesty is a moral belief, it is not adopted.

Breaking Beliefs

“Doesn't the fight for survival also justify swindle and theft? In self defense, anything goes.”
So what would possibly drive someone to betray a belief? For the same reason that someone would
adopt an idea to begin with: it validates their existence. This includes, but is not limited to, lying,
cheating, and any other form of hypocrisy that comes to the human mind. People lie all the time for
gain and often feel no moral or ethical guilt unless they are caught in the act and found guilty by
public opinion.

I urge those who are about to condemn my last paragraph to not expect the normal behavior of
someone under the stress of guilt to be melodramatic: almost nobody will break down nervously or
randomly after an undetermined amount of time unless they are caught. If people really did feel guilt
for betraying principles, Bernie Madoff would have plead guilty long before his trial, cheating on
marital fidelity would not be so commonplace, and capitalism would not be attacked on ethical
ground so profoundly.

As long as someone has something to gain, abandoning a value, even if it is hypocritical, is a likely
possibility. George Carlin, one of the greatest comedians of all time, mentioned that many Americans
are “full of shit.” A euphemistic substitute for “full of shit” would be something along the lines of “a
neurotic tendency to lie.”

“And the sad part is, most people seem indoctrinated to believe that bullshit only comes from certain
places, certain sources: Advertising, politics, salesmen. Not true! Bullshit is everywhere. Bullshit is
ramping. Parents are full of shit, teachers are full of shit, clergymen are full of shit, and law-
enforcement people are full of shit.”
If someone needs an essay explaining why all these above people are full of shit, I recommend they
watch “You Are All Diseased” by George Carlin because, on paper, my argument would simply be
less slanderous and more dull. For the sake of the bullshit I am fed about saving all the trees in the
world instead of accepting the reality that trees that are used for paper are grown on tree farms, I will
skip the extensive explanation why these people are full of shit and provide one that we are all
familiar with.

Politicians are the greatest source of shit and one of the prime examples of how people betray morals
and commit hypocrisy to a stunning extent. A lot of these politicians label themselves as Christians
and go off on tangents declaring how America is a Christian nation. But the irony of it is that they do
not hold these Christian values dear. If they had read the Bible, the would have noted Mathews 6:24

"No one can serve two masters. Either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted
to the one and despise the other.”

In other words, these politicians cannot serve both his people and God. As a Christian, one is
obligated to serve God. The reasonable conclusions that can be drawn is that either these politicians
are “completely full of shit” and are playing to the people’s obsession of “a Christian America” to
gain, or they really have not read the Bible. Hence, in both cases, it can be said that these politicians
are still lying for personal gain. So instead of adhering to the Christianity they claim to support, they
modify Christianity to overlook it. Hence, there is a vague definition of “Protestantism” in America.
Although there are 34,000 sects of Christianity, nobody can name which sect Obama or Bush is in.
Yet the people and the politicians recognize them as “protestant.” If there is no specific affiliation nor
is there and honest allegiance, can it be said that the use of religion is a self-serving tool? Can it also
be said that there is room to theorize that politicians not only are willing to violate beliefs but are void
of any to begin with?

Another group that violates their own beliefs or a lack thereof is parents. Parents lie all the time to
their children in order to establish their dominance in the household. A parent is not obligated to
logically explain things to their children and as a result, the phrase “Do ____ or you’re grounded!” is
more common that “If you do _____ you will get ____.” Parents also heckle their children into after
school extracurricular activities and speaking from personal experience, there is an incredible amount
of resentment in the child towards the parent. All they know is that it is “good for my future” and all
these parents know is “I am doing what is best for the child’s future.” Parents don’t even care how
the children feel because as long as the child LOOKS alright, they do not feel an obligation to
connect with them. The child often feels disconnected from their parents emotionally but attached
materialistically. All this adds up to is just a sophisticated form of slavery.

Most people would rebut and say that it is because the child is completely unwilling and ignorant of
logic to begin with. But children can be reasoned with and if parents provide an insensitive, just like
adults provide insensitive to other adults to work, the children can be made to listen and obey out of
their OWN WILL. I’m surprised how differently people treat children when it comes to getting them
to do things. Parents are willing to claim that the child shouldn’t be treated as an adult because he
isn’t an adult, but that is a thinly veiled form of a dictatorship. In reality, if one looks at the world,
adults are no better than children: they only have a larger vocabulary.
Yet these parents believe that what they’re doing is for the children. It is not: they are doing this for
themselves. They feel that they themselves are inadequate so they must masturbate to the idea that
their success lies in the success of their children. That is why parents hang bumper stickers of “We
are the proud parents of an honor student at _____” and often brag about the achievements of their
children to their friends at parties. I speak from personal experience when I say that when parents get
together, they spend at least half the time talking about what their children are doing in school and
how excellent they are. To the parents reading this: when was the last time when you asked your
child what he wants to do with his life? When was the last time when you asked your child to make
his own choice instead of select a choice from a pool that you have created? Parents delude
themselves into believing that what they’re doing is benevolent when, in reality, they are only acting
on their subconscious self-servant belief for an odd sense of gain.

I’m Just Like You: Accept My Existence!

"You measure democracy by the freedom it gives its dissidents, not the freedom it gives its assimilated
conformists".

Abbie Hoffman
People choose beliefs that are accepted as politically correct and announce them to the world because
nobody wants to look bad. Once again, nobody wants to critically think: they want beliefs handed to
them on a silver platter. This is a hard concept to understand but there is another way to think about
it: rarely does anybody believe in a belief that the masses do not. In fact, people often reject beliefs
that society says are evil or politically incorrect. When was the last time someone acknowledge that
Communism has it’s merits? When was the last time someone in class spoke out against the faulty
actions of a teacher? Probably never because everyone is afraid of how society judges them. They
may believe in different beliefs than what they say they believe in, but it is this hypocrisy that only
furthers the point of betraying a belief for gain. What is the point of having a belief if one does not
act upon it?

Such an obsession with self righteousness, self protection, and gain will ultimately lead to the
betrayal of beliefs in order to reaffirm a person's existence. Beliefs loose all meaning once someone
refuses to act upon them, for it moots its message and nobody will take it seriously. Since beliefs
validate existences, it is necessary for it to shape the person's experience to stay alive and vice versa.

So the final and logical question to ask is: what do we do with the people who have radically different
ideas and announce it to the world? What if it challenges our existence? We call them a Communist,
Socialist, Nazi, and every other word the Teabaggers have thrown at Obama. I’m serious. But let us
not look at simply what is done by the people whose existences are challenged. Rather, let us look at
people who present these ideas to gain a better understanding of how people treat them and the
consequences.

People really do fear public scrutiny and this fear is a prevalent factor in why society is paralyzed and
thus humanity itself is too. People are subject to peer pressure, for it is a fear of letting the
expectations of the masses down that drives people to conform with them, even if it betrays their own
belief. This once again plays to the idea of gain, for if one conforms to society, they gain social
acceptance. A good example of this is everyday life at the school or in the workplace: people are
more willing to suck up to teachers or bosses to earn their favor instead of telling them they are not
teaching or are a responsible manager because they will be looked down upon by the higher-ups who
determine the status quo that the lower people must follow. A teacher decides the grades of a student
and as a human being, is more likely to be lenient towards someone who feeds him or her a sweet lie
instead of a bitter truth. This is the same with bosses in the workforce: he or she will give a pay raise
to someone who always sucks up to them compared to someone who always criticizes their job. It is
this need to survive through social acceptance that paralyzes growth itself for the need to change the
flaws in a social system or structure is continuously hindered by the ignorance and lies given to
survive. A person may believe that a social system is faulty but is forced to participate in it because it
is the one that controls their lives and determines their survival. Those who are challenged by the
individual do not act honestly or are gracious for the criticism but rather, act spitefully towards the
person, even though one can learn more through criticism than a lie. Thus, the need to conform
enslaves everyone and kills their ability to transform the system by destroying their right to speak out
against it.
Religion is a perfect example for it is the apex of ignorance in human society. Religion is simply a
perpetuated power structure based on outdated beliefs. It rejects science to explain the existence of all
things in the universe and gives the claim of creation to a being they cannot meet until they die. To
the population, we believe that DNA is the very code for the individual’s existence, replicating and
creating our cells and biological necessities. We believe in the big bang theory and teach it over the
idea of “intelligent design,” a thinly veiled form of religion. We believe in a heliocentric universe
rather than a geocentric universe that religion has perpetuated. As a result of this challenge to an
outdated belief system, religion has imprisoned and oppressed many people who come up with new
ideas. Martin Luther and the Diet of Worms was an attempt at stopping Luther’s radical protestant
ideas of salvation through faith as it would reject the role of the pope and a church, two things that
could perpetuate the Catholic Church’s control. The Catholic Church even put Galileo Galilei under
house arrest for publishing his findings on a heliocentric universe because God was not even given
credit in the book, which would result in weakening the power of religion. This continual rejection
and punishment of those who create new ideas that challenge the existence of people and institutions
is a constant in our society. Even though America adopts Protestantism over Catholicism and believes
in the heliocentric universe today, the ideas were rejected back then instead of examined. Therefore,
we can say that ideas will continually progress and people will continually try to stop the ideas
through whatever means necessary to preserve their own existence.

Yet, religion is perpetuated because it plays to humanity’s fear of loss. Logic and new information
are rejected in the name of salvation. Religion convinces people that they will lose everything and
burn in a fiery pit of death forever and that a certain religion is the only path to escaping from it.
Religion thus perpetuates “faith,” an assumption of the facts without a logical examination. This is
why it can survive, even though religion itself makes no sense: because the masses are scared into
believing it. Fear mongering is religion’s greatest weapon and it’s credibility through constant
perpetuation keeps it alive. We trust religion because it has existed for thousands of years and take
solace in the idea of living in a heavenly afterlife. But this is only because nobody has been able to
organizes the masses into destroying it and thus, the masses who do believe in religion, perpetuate it.
People join because of this idea of a fire pit of death and are scared into believing it for their own
survival. When one person is deluded, we call it insanity. When the masses are deluded, we call it
religion.

Social conformity is the norm and it dictates our beliefs. We may call it euphemistically “peer
pressure,” but it is nothing more than humans imposing beliefs. Our refusal to think fuels this status
quo. We can only choose from a handful of beliefs because of our fear of ostracization and our refusal
to think.
Verdict

So what have we come to? We are now people who attack and refute beliefs and the individuals who
create them instead of examining them for validity. We erroneously associate being wrong or being
different with failure because failure means that our existence has diminished. Whenever there is a
new belief or idea that challenges our own, especially when it threatens our existence, we are quick to
reject it instead of considering it. A radical idea that seeks to break the boundaries of the human
imagination is often met with insult and ignorance for it often challenges the existence of current
ideas. We insult those who create these beliefs instead of thanking them for having a creative mind.

Instead, we should be honoring failure as a way of bringing an individual to a whole new level of
understanding and strengthening their view of the world. New ideas will continually replace old ones.
Greater understanding of the world we live in will always replace the archaic assumptions of ancient
people. We have gone from religion to science, from alchemy to chemistry, from the agricultural
revolution to the industrial revolution, from spears and swords to guns, and from mail to the Internet.
It is inevitable that ideas will be replaced by new ones as the need arises so does it make sense that
we should welcome ideas instead of shun them?

Yet, we are unable to because we have become self appointed guardians of the status quo. We
ostracize whoever is different and it is this fear of being cast out from the group that makes the
individual no longer an individual. A person becomes a copy of what they see in mainstream society
upon fear of being cast out for being different. We become sheep that no longer need a dog to tell us
where to stand or what not to do for the group automatically rejects anyone who is different. This can
be seen in racism, discrimination, and the exile of radical thinkers. This bigoted train of thought
cannot be removed unless we are able to change ourselves first, challenge the status quo, and
overcome the fear of being ostracized.

There is no point to a belief if one does not act upon it. People can have an opinion but it is
meaningless in the face of establishment because whatever the establishment says is the truth
becomes the truth. As a result, betrayal of beliefs is always a constant for humans must constantly
update their beliefs to conform to the status quo and not to what he or she individually believes. This
conformity will only perpetuate the lies that people are cohered into.

People’s ideas are never their own unless they have experienced them first hand and not through what
the television tells them. People betray the beliefs they believe in for gain. People reject ideas that
destroy their existence. There is no consistency to humanity when it comes to beliefs.

The very idea of a belief is to validate a person’s existence and it thus creates a barrier that imprisons
one’s self from progress. It serves as a barrier to progress itself for ideas are only accepted by a
person when they benefit him or her.
For example, our belief in money serves as a barrier to progress. When politicians talk about
legislation, they do not consider the environmental damage first nor do they consider human life: they
focus on how much it will cost. They focus on money and create the fear of debt to block legislation
(a familiar health care reform bill tune by the Republicans.) People, when they consider doing favors,
think “win-win”, which is really a euphemism for “what do I get out of this? What's in it for me?”
This is especially true in business as well. But if we took a step back, we would realize that money
run on faith, we realize that if we did not believe in a simple piece of paper to dictate our lives, we
could accomplish much more. Corporations would have no grounds to block environmental
legislation and people would not becomes slaves to debt. In fact, if the world stopped believing in
money, we could fix the debt that we fear by making it not exist.

Therefore, considering all these factors, there is no such thing as a belief: just a delusion for ideas are
constantly changing. There is no real thing as a belief system. There is no such thing as God. It is
only a matter of time before ideas become updated and more and more of the truths of the world that
the establishment tries to hide and suppress in order to maintain its agenda of self preservation come
to light. There is no such thing as a smart human being: just a person who can think different than
others. Unfortunately, the idea of intelligence has become so distorted by the desire to maintain the
status quo that intelligence is only considered when it benefits the individual or the system and never
the collective.

Although it seems ideal to say that if everyone believed in the same thing that everything would be
fine, that is an ignorant view for it imprisons all of humanity in a bubble. This is the view of people
who only want to believe that everyone should believe in the same things as him or her. Beliefs
fundamentally serve to validate an existence and to spread that would be selfish and self-servant for it
forces its views onto other people.

Everyone’s beliefs are meaningless when it comes to the necessities of life. The planet cannot run on
money but it can run on the light and heat it gets from the Sun. Us humans, regardless of race or
religion, are born naked, drink water, and eat food. We realize what connects all of us is this idea that
all of us are really a part of nature: we are sub-servant to it, not ourselves nor anyone else nor a
system. When we believe in nothing, we find the answer to everything. John Salk, the man who
created the vaccine for polio, could have become a billionaire many times over with his vaccine. But
he didn't believe in privatizing a life saving vaccine and therefore, he didn't patent it. He lived a good
life with his salary as a university professor. If it wasn't for a man like Salk, a lot of us would be
dead, regardless of religion, race, or social status.

Its time we looked at the world from it's perspective and not from our own. Beliefs are nothing but
tools for selfish survival. We do not own anything. We are not the single greatest entity on the planet.
The planet is it's own entity and we are not it's masters: it owns us. We cannot survive without it and no
matter what we believe in, the belief is simply moot in the grand scheme of things. But if we do not try
to eliminate our beliefs and the bigotry that arises from it, we are doomed to endless wars and the
destruction of the world and each other.