You see, anytime you allow a homogeneous group to write your thoughts,
you slowly poison free thought. For example, many of my readers have already
boxed me into a category: MJ is one of these libertarian goons with a cache of
guns! MJ is a corporatist! MJ this, MJ that! The truth is, if I disclosed my views
on hot-button issues, such as religion, gay marriage, or environmentalism, your
eyes would pop their sockets because no box fits me. Perhaps that makes me
“independent”—but I call it someone who hasn’t crowdsourced their thoughts to
the likes of Jon Oliver and poorly written
Saturday Night Live
skits.
Behind our willingness to outsource thought sits our beliefs.
Beliefs are merely concepts, ideas, and thoughts that we regard as true.
And no
matter what your beliefs, there’s an identical group who believes the same. 9/11
was a government conspiracy? You’ve got a group. Aliens living among us?
You’ve got a group. While we are free to question and investigate our beliefs, few
do. Instead, we seek to ratify them through a collective groupthink. And as a
result, they escape critique and transcend, year after year, producing the same
old results. Many times, these beliefs aren’t our original thoughts but carbon-
copy doctrine planted by seeders or co-opted from the crowds we identify with.
In other cases, they are generational, passed from ancestry.
“Get a job, baby!”
That’s my mom screaming up the stairs. She screeched at me weekly in a
voice that could shatter windows and incapacitate an invading infantry. It was
after college and I was still leeching off Mom while I struggled to find my
entrepreneurial way. My mom was staunchly old-school and regularly hurled
these “get a job” Hail Marys straight from the
SCRIPTED
play-book. For her,
success was earned nine to five, Monday through Friday.
The point is, thank your parental seeder for some, if not all, of your
crowdsourced beliefs. As children, we internalize the beliefs of those around us.
If you come from a third-generation military family, you’ve probably adopted a
military mindset. If your parents believe a particular religion, so do you. On my
forum, countless young Asian adults complain about their demanding parents
who unequivocally, without negotiation, insist they become an engineer or a
doctor. The
SCRIPT
might as well be etched in stone.
Besides parental conditioning, crowdsourced beliefs also come from your
usual gang of seeders: authority figures and communal associations, such as
political parties and advocacy organizations. If your favorite actor endorses a
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