Religious convictions affect political behaviour and allegiances.

The world might soon come to an end, but jasmins won’t grow as fast, and the grass won’t sprout hastily. It all takes time and it seems the world is in a haste to be over.

People don’t fathom how substantial the manipulation of religion is. It is grandiose. Belief systems are gearwheels. By the time it is impossible to breathe, a person becomes too weak to make their way out.

Plans schemed around a person must be rejected. They don’t allow room for negotiations (and I have taken upon myself to not negotiate with [g]od).

A sort of inner political reform.

Believing in strict, immuable loyalty revolving around one person, one deity, a one-way to govern all, reflects in political choices that deny questioning.

Hopes and fears built around one persona discourage personal challenge.

To think that leaving a system for good causes only loss is a biased, pre-convinced idea humans are conditioned to accept so that they never imagine they could ever leave [insert system here].

To thrive, to reach the height of happiness, a customised belief system is of the utmost importance. Happiness depends in a large percentage on loving what is being endeavoured daily; to be in sync with what one believes in.

A good belief system is, therefore, constructed. Assertion by insistence. A belief system is ownership.

A new belief system, a system one strongly identifies with, and which has been created, consequently implies a modus operandi. A system that requires constant negotiation against oneself is not a good system.

Morality—which humans pride themselves to uphold and possess—becomes questionable. In our imagination, humans create dilemmas that need not exist in the first place. Humans place themselves in dire positions that they can spare themselves from. (Re-read the past two sentences in the first person singular.)

In the Trolley problem, the driver is unable to stop as the break lever is damaged and as a result, can either tilt the trolley to the left or to the right. Either/or causes the death of innocent people who happen to be located on the railway at the time of the event. The difference is that either of trajectories can generate a more/lesser amount of deaths.

Whose life would you spare? Who would you kill?

This is where imagination comes in handy. It questions the reason this scenario exists in this particular form. It also posits the possibility of its non existence.

Hence, logic asks what comes first: morality or ethics. Morality isn’t in the Bible. The thought precedes the text. The thought is within before it is learned to be read and interpreted in the (holy) text.

Negotiate with yourself. Cogitate the ideologies through which you interpret reality.

To alter belief systems is to think outside the box—beyond the box.

It is paradoxical: we are taught to think outside the box, yet as kids, we learn to write within definite squares and lines.

Is it liberating to think without constraints, without a sense of urgency.

Next time you get a notebook, have it with blank pages.