If there is one thing to make the minority's life easier, just do not add more weight on them. Discrimination is just the worst thing we could do as human.


5 minutes read

Last time we have discussed about how a religion formed in the middle of the society, but we have not discussed one thing: how it could survive and get spread? How an idea came from a single person or a group could take over a whole society or even a continent, and shaped the history of mankind? It all starts with one thing: belief.


Comfort and Survival

There are a lot of reasons to explain why some religions make it through the history, and some failed. However, we could divide them into two big categories: personal reasons and cultural reasons.

It starts with a belief, and how someone could get influenced and believe a new emerging idea? It does not. People do not get that easily to be influenced, particularly on an abstract concept as a belief in God. If someone has lived his/her own life believing in a certain thing, there is no single event that could make them change their direction instantaneously.

However, let's start from the absolute beginning: how the idea of a higher power emerge in the middle of the society? It is actually quite simple, and surprisingly it all has to do with something we love: our life. People who are enjoying certain events in their life will definitely want that these events continuously happen eternally. But as we all know, human's life is not eternal. We die. That's why the idea of there is an eternal happiness after we die looks so appealing towards our human brain. We do not want this happiness to end.

How about people who suffer in their life? It will end, too, and a new "life" will begin right after their death. Some religions believe that death is a beginning of an eternal life and definitely a freedom from their suffering in the world. Both cases solved.

If there is indeed a life after death, it is beyond our understanding as human, that's why we need something else that govern our life, that has bigger power than ours, which we could not understand at all as long as we are living on earth. This is where God came from. A higher power that govern our world and the life after our death. He decides our fate, he is watching everything we do, and have his way that we just need to believe and everything would turn out okay.

A Powerful Education Doctrine

This idea turns out to be so powerful especially as an education resource. Every parent wants their children to behave well, so they plant the idea of a bigger power that is watching every single of our action, so the children will behave well even without the direct supervision from the parents.

There is actually a study about children's behaviour when they are given a set of rules, and a group was told that there is an invisible princess that are watching on them, and the other group was told nothing. The children in the first group tend to follow the rules more than the children in the second, because they believe that this invisible princess is watching, especially when they break the rules.

Children who do not have understanding yet or at least not mature enough to make shape their own perspective of this phenomena of course will believe that this kind of power do exist. This idea grow inside the children's tiny brain, and they carry with them forever. Once they are older they could definitely have other perspectives and disagree with the idea, but there are more people who actually have the same belief in God since they were children, compared to people who changed his mind.

How We Cope With Successes and Failures

This idea also support how we react to our successes and failures. If we believe that there is a higher power create a path for our life, it does not matter if we fail. Our intention just not suits God's will, as people often say. If we succeed, then it is also God's will.

It works really well with our daily lives for a lot of people, and since then believing in God fulfil our need of security in life. We do not need to fear about our life anymore, since there is God Almighty that will help us throughout our life, and it also ensures us that our happiness in life will not end; there is an eternal life waiting for us right after our death.

How An Idea Fits Our Survival

If believing in an eternal life and a security in our life does not seem appealing enough, then there is another factor: culture and tradition. Once an idea has spread among a society and managed to stay alive for some time, it shows one thing: it fits our survival needs.

Some religions support our survival: they might not be true in a sense, but they help the people to live. For example, when the Egyptians believe in the God of Sun, we know now that the idea is totally wrong. However, people at that time managed to live and survive, and there is of course a tendency to keep what they are doing, including their belief.

Their belief may not be true and may not be the key factor of their survival, but as the old proverb say: "if it ain't broke, don't fix it." They are somehow consistent with survival in ways that alternatives might not be. However, one thing is certain: having a same idea throughout the society give the society the same goal on what they want to achieve. This helps people to share opinions and stories, make them more relatable to each other, which leads us to the main point: becoming a minority. 

The Inconvenience of Being a Minority

If you have travelled to a foreign country, or maybe just a new place that is totally different that what you come from, you know this feeling of being guilty without being wrong. What does it mean? Let's say you travel to a country that is totally different than your home country. Different race, different custom, different languages, everything. Then you go to a restaurant, and you want to order some food. 

Even you are imitating how the locals order food, paying with the same currency, eating with the same manner, and they don't actually care about you being there, at first you will not feel uncomfortable, just because you feel that you are not the part of the group. It is not the way we act, it is just because how we look and where we come from.

The same reason applies for the locals, sometimes the locals are looking at you in a way that makes you feel uncomfortable, because you are just not the part of the majority. This also explains racism. Even if we managed to give the same rights to everyone, which I definitely want it to be, there is still this mindset rooted in our brain that we are superior because we are a part of the majority.

Even if the majority does nothing to harm you or bully you, at first there is still this uneasiness in our brain. Your brain realised that you are not the part of the group and wanted to blend in even sometimes we cannot. 

This creates a huge pressure to the minority to join, if they can, which they could in the term of a religion. Some people who cannot cope with the pressure of being a minority will choose to join the majority because it gives them comfort. They fill safe because they are now the part of the group that has believed in an idea that gives them survival for a long time.

How It Shapes Our View Of The World

In the end, there are a lot of factors that play to why we found comfort in religion: Firstly, we feel safe because there is a higher power that already has a path laid for us to live on the earth, and after we die there is a place so we don't need to fear of death. Secondly, we just feel satisfied if we could blend in with the majority. It makes us feel secure and not threatened, even if no one is actually threatening us.

If there is one thing to make the minority's life easier, just do not add burden to them. Act the same to everyone. They already feel uneasy because of it, and discrimination is just the worst thing we could add to their burden. After all we are all humans, trying to figure out how we could survive day to day.

Title image credit : dribbble.com