The Power of Belief
Be it new or ancient, religious or sacrilegious, empowering or self-destroying, no idea has true power unless it is given the chance to be voiced, shared, and believed. Of course, an unshared idea would have some form of influence over whoever privileged its first spark to light somewhere in the depths of his or her mind. However, it is relatively rare for an idea to be held so privately; humans are very social beings, and it has always been difficult for the majority of them not to share a personal secret or idea with at least one other person, no matter how long they may be able to withhold it. Withdrawing from that tangent: The secluded power of a completely private idea isn’t true power at all. Given total or even dominant belief and preferably a strong imagination—or even a detachment from reality, a rift between existing “facts” and “ideas”—even a small, vague, relatively harmless idea could swell into factual reality….but only for that one person in particular. This person, unnervingly and obstinately altered by his or her new belief, would then be deemed “mentally ill” or “insane” by the rest of humanity, which does not perceive the fact which the sufferer had nurtured and been overtaken by. Not all ideas grow to this strength, and certainly not all private ones. No, the more publicity an idea receives, the more influence it inherits, and the more it will be able to spread, eventually spinning forth an unstoppable cycle of destruction. A handful of the few people straying this far into the concept of conceptualisation might recall the original labels of ideas being “empowering or self-destroying” and thus raise an eyebrow at the withering effect that all powerful ideas supposedly have in the end. To be rightfully fair, those labels are too specific, as well as lacking in contrast. An idea can begin as a source of hope and gradually twist its own empowerment into a cause of emotional distress or unbalance, perhaps by revealing itself to be “false” and then continuing to weave a string of shadows into its own pre-established cloth of light. In fact, even labels such as “good and bad”, “positive and negative” are too closely interrelated to be truly separate labels and instead function as indistinct yet perpetually familiar concepts. They are their own ideas—in fact, the same idea: The proposition of good and evil, arguably the most influential idea to date, as archaic as the ideas of life and existence. It seems this relation has gone off-course once more. Forbidden as it may be to breach the self-created wall of personal disinvolvement regarding one’s relation of theories, I would like to privilege myself enough to chip away at that concrete fable-telling guise, namely to apologise for my own distracted ramblings. I have always been the talkative, imaginative sort, which is why I simply cannot hold these ideas within myself any longer. I have chosen to run an experiment. This experiment may either dratically change the way the world sees itself or turn inward on me as the sole forerunner of these thoughts and ideas. The test is as follows: In this text, I am going to set a rule. Depending on how many people choose to believe and follow this rule, I will judge the ‘truth’, or believability, of my thoughts. I will judge my own ability to change the world. No matter what, I will not tell you whether this rule is good or bad in my opinion, or whether or not I will laugh or nod if I see it drifting about in the world. I will simply state this rule and end my post, and we will see where it goes from there. I may revisit this in the future, if I am not too badly effected to continue. Here goes everything. Never forget to look over your shoulder– you may catch someone whispering in your ear. Credit: Roz, The Lord of Bad Timing Copyright Statement: Unless explicitly stated, all stories published on Creepypasta.com are the property of (and under copyright to) their respective authors, and may not be narrated or performed under any circumstance.