The following is my “Personal Philosophy Essay” assignment submitted to “First-Year Composition 2.0” course offered by Georgia Institute of Technology at coursera.org. The assignment was as follows:
Compose a 400-500 word personal philosophy essay in which you lead your audience to recognize and understand why a specific belief is important to you.
Neutralism
Which party did you sided in the last US election: Republican or Democrats? I choose neither. I choose to be neutral because it is non-sided. Being neutral is well-accepted, then why not?
I live in Indonesia which uses democracy as the political system. At the 2009 general election, although I did not have the right to vote because I am underage, I supported the Democratic Party. That time, the party was very popular because the government, lead by the president who was from that party, successfully lowered the oil price for the first time in my country history. But time flies, after some time, around 2011, there were many corruption cases from that party. Since then I lost my faith in politicians, I do not want to trust any political parties any more. Since then, I choose to be neutral at politics.
I am also an active Wikipedia editor since 2009. I looked around and joined their community. Finally I came across their policies which encouraged us to write, edit, and think neutrally and freely. Every policy they made is done through a consensus, not popular vote. Popular vote, I think, is the weakness of democracy: popular thing is not always the correct thing. Being in the community made me believe in neutrality.
I strongly believe that being neutral will not cause trouble to others. Besides not causing troubles, it also maintains peace among the extremes. It also make me not to be hated at all in the communities. Hence, I can join many groups. Because of that, I am well-known by many people as a person who did not discomfort others because of their beliefs.
I also believe in Buddhism, which some might says is non-neutral. It was since a kid I was taught Buddhist by my parents and I did not regret it. Buddhist religion is based on logical facts. Buddha taught us what made him enlightened and how to achieve it. to achieve enlightenment, one must practice meditation and the middle-way. The middle-way is a practice which is balanced between suffering and happiness. Meditation is simply the act of focusing mind to an object. Besides enlightenment, meditation can help people relieve their stress and make them calm. Buddhism in my opinion is a neutral religion which focuses on peace of mind and logical facts.
In conclusion, I believe in neutralism because it did not biased toward one side. Although I choose to be neutral at politics at first, I started to believe in neutrality since I joined the Wikipedia community. I did not regret it as it makes me well-accepted in many communities. Besides neutrality, I also believe in Buddhism which centered on logical facts and peaceful thoughts.