The most common form of peer pressure we face is to conform, to go with the group’s expectations and behave the way the group expects us to. This is not inherently a bad situation to be in, despite what some people say, and a sign that we’re caught in “groupthink” no matter what. The group around us may be composed of people who are of sound, independent judgment and they have all arrived to a similar conclusion about how we live our life – a change we should make.
The most common peer pressure situation that a person finds themselves in is the one where the person has to go along with an evil mob. Statistically speaking, since the world is made up of a majority of people who do not have a correct ethical framework, the chance is very high that the average peer pressure situation is one where bad people are influencing you to sell out and to hurt yourself. You are not a purely innocent victim because in your moral wanderings, you managed to get involved with an evil mob, but you should not confuse your wanderings and being in an impressionable state with being like one of the mob, which will put its pressure on you.
Again, there are good groups of people and their leaders will counsel you and advise you to do what is right. Those groups are just few and far between.
The biggest mob in the world, and the one with the most influence over the uninitiated, is the mob of wrongdoing. This mob has many lies to get you to stop listening to your gut instinct. This mob will confer status and popularity on you, if you will just give up a bit of your dignity here and there. Those who give away the most of their soul are treated as the most special and important in this mob.
The way you know the mob is on you is when you’re in a low state and someone is influencing you to trade away your connection to yourself in exchange for short term relief. Your connection to yourself is what keeps you true to yourself and true to the natural logic of the world. You have inherited thousands of years of intuition, insights, and instincts that have allowed humans to know the rhythms of nature and tame the chaos that the wilderness provokes in human life. You are equipped to live a rich life, if only you will self-reflect and listen to those deep notions in yourself.
The mob wants you to give that up. You must not be on a deep, philosophical or religious, search to know the truth. You must not be allowed to “have too much to think”. Your body must not be allowed to get too healthy. You must not experience love past a certain point in this life. You will be permitted to be only so wealthy. If you go past any of the small limits of the mob, you become a danger to the mob. Greater and greater corruption has to be conferred upon you in order to break you and prevent you from being a person who will set others free.
The mob wants you to give up your independent judgment. It wants to devour your sexual energy. It wants to get you worshipping false idols. It wants your mind shattered so you will go along with the programming it has engineered. It wants you distracted on a daily, hourly, and minute to minute basis. It wants you to fall in love with the uncivilized and violent. The mob wants you to signal petty criminality so it knows you’re a harmless clown without an advanced thought in its head.
All of this starts with peer pressure. It starts with one or two peers in a low state, offering their version of “compassion” and “understanding” to a confused person. This behavior has nothing to do with resolution of the confusion at hand but rather is intended to crystallize the confusion in the target with social approval. People must be kept in a state of uncertainty for as long as possible until their lone certainty in this life is that people should remain uncertain. Uncertainty makes standards unclear. With everyone unclear on standards, law and order become impossible to enforce because no one agrees on terms. The only thing people expect then is the “compassion” and “understanding” they were shown when they were initiated into the mob, which the mob is happy to give because it’s cheap and easy to do so. The mob lives in a state of meaninglessness that it attempts to suck you into.
Peer pressure can come from all angles. It can come from your family, your friends, your neighbors, and your religious community. It most certainly comes from popular culture, schools, and social media. Some of it is useful. Most of it demeans you. In those moments of peer pressure, you will want to decide, “Does this lessen my connection to myself or not?”
