Modern day religion

It’s only right to write about this today.

Trump won.

I don’t follow politics and have almost zero knowledge/interest about it. So most of the information I have is through hearsay and by most accounts, Trump is not a good guy. Obviously it’s hard to define good these days but then let’s just say we will leave this argument for another day.

As the election result reveals itself throughout the day, my Facebook is flooded with concerned messages. Yes, I know some people just post things when it’s popular to do so but there are quite a lot of people who are genuinely scared.  And these people, as far as I can tell, are supposedly supporters of democracy.

My first reaction is: if we are so in love with democracy (ideals), shouldn’t we respect the result (systems) as well?

Democracy spoke. That’s all.

However, the divide amongst people is amazing. Political ideals and systems do have a significant impact to many people lives. Many people follow political ideals and systems religiously (pun intended). For example, voting is similar to attending a service – an obligation and support by the believers.

That is why I believe politics is the modern day religion.

We can even argue that political ideals and systems are similar to religious ideals and systems. And although it’s easier to blame it on the systems (Trump) rather than the ideals (freedom), we should really think twice about what is the real argument we should get into.

Most of all, hopefully one day we will have an similar word such as “atheism” for people who are liberated from the preaching of political ideals and systems.

This leads to my second point, as I go to Google, I see this…

I understand the electoral vote system is complicated but if we fall back to the actual number of votes, we can see Trump somehow got less votes.

The most puzzling thing is however, how come I don’t see any Trump supporters on my Facebook (or any social networks)?

The easy conclusion is that either 1/ People who voted for Trump don’t use Facebook or 2/ I don’t have Facebook friends who support Trump (at least based on what they say).

Obviously the likelihood of 1/ being true is very low, so the only logical conclusion is 2/.

Then this strikes me.

If I am surrounded so overwhelmingly by people who do not support Trump (whether that translates into supporting Clinton is another story), am I not automatically conditioned in that way through peer pressure or social conditioning?

And this could also means that there are many people (literally the other half of the voting population in US) who are experiencing similar conditioning as well?

It took us thousands of years before we truly understand religions. Let’s hope we don’t need another thousands of years to understand politics.

We deserve better – although the desire/need to be managed will always be there to be taken advantage of.