Why Your Beliefs are NOT Your Own
When I was a kid, I was often told a proverb in school textbooks and by most of the elders. The proverb was “Kaal kare so aaj kar, jo aaj kare so ab, pal me parlay hoyegi, bahuri karega kab.”
This literally translates to – What is to be done tomorrow, do it today. What is to be done today, do it now. If the end of the world happens in a moment, when will you get a chance to do things?
My only query to this as a kid, which I still don’t have the answer is: If the end of the world is to happen in a moment anyway, why should I bother doing irrelevant things I clearly don’t want to do? Because if I wanted to do them, I would have already done them.
You may find this observation funny, but here is something funnier – Doing irrelevant things we don’t want to do is exactly what most of us are doing all our lives anyway.
Many of things you believe to be true (although, not all) are actually a result of propaganda and brainwashing, regardless of where you live and which era you live in, at least since modern humans started living in organized societies. In other words, it is information that is not necessarily accurate but somebody with control and influence believes that everyone else should believe it anyway.
There is a phenomenon in nature where some ants keep climbing on top of grass blades despite falling off constantly, it may seem like “persistence” but actually there is no benefit to the ant itself, it often ends up getting eaten by Sheep eating the grass.
So why is the ant doing it? Its brain is being manipulated a flatworm that needs to be in the gut of sheep to reproduce effectively. By commanding the ant to end up as Sheep Dinner by being on top of grass blades that Sheep will inevitably eat, the parasite has improved its own reproductive success. The real benefit is to the parasite and not the ant.
Similarly, there is another parasite called Toxoplasma that can only reproduce inside the intestine of cats. It gets into rats and takes control of a rat’s brain to avoid fearing cats and thus it ends up getting eaten by the cat. There is no benefit to the rat, but there is a huge benefit to the parasite.
Remember, many of the things you are taught by society, whether in terms of the typical formal education, encouragements of participating in the rat race or any other collective beliefs, don’t actually serve you any purpose, it may serve the system influencing you, but you are just like rat being brainwashed to end up as cat dinner. The question is do you want to be a rat?