Cedric Brewer
English W131
Ms. Tracy Donhardt
January 19, 2013

The Status Quo
In Howard Zinn’s book, Passionate Declarations: Essays on War and Justice, Chapter 1 entitled, “Introduction: American Ideology,” begins with a discussion of a few instances in history where groups of people believed that other races and social classes were inferior to others. The end result of these instances was that many, if not all, of the inferior people were killed. From these occurrences, Zinn concludes that our thinking does not merely spark debates, but ultimately is a variable of life and death. He also believes that although we live in a democratic country, the ideas of ethical behavior that were formulated by our forefathers has condemned us to accept them as right, without questioning why they are right. These American ideologies were not framed by a group of conspirators, nor were they accidental; these ideas were a result of natural selection in which ideas were encouraged, financed, and pushed forward by those who were in power or by those who had great influence on the general public. People who were in power pushed these ideologies because they wanted more control. If people were allowed to do and think as they pleased, they would end up having no control over the public. Although these beliefs were written off as correct, Zinn believes that if we decide to reexamine these beliefs, and see that they are not “natural” ideas, we have come to a major turning point: we are examining and confronting American ideology (Zinn 1-8).
These ideas that are expressed in “Introduction: American Ideology,” are very sound because they help me to see why it is important to challenge the status quo. If I sit back and just allow people to feed me information about one fact or another, and I just absorb it all in, then I may not really be formulating my own beliefs, but accepting someone else’s. There should be a deeper meaning to what I believe further than what someone has dictated to me to be correct. I should ask intuitive questions about why someone views something as correct, and by that process, I might begin to clearly see their idea as acceptable. For example, in high school, many of the classes that I took were just boring, laid-out facts about people, places, and things, and I simply just soaked all of the information in without even giving thought as to why that information was correct. Whereas, when it came to picking the faith/religion that I believe in, it was not as simple as just letting the preacher tell me a whole bunch of stories of people in the Bible who followed Jesus. It took me to persistently study the Bible and come to my own sense of recognition to believe what my pastor was saying was correct. I then had to make sure that I understood the real meaning of the Bible by asking my pastor questions pertaining to areas that I may have been unsure about.
Oftentimes, many people, including myself, suppress what they believe in because as Zinn mentioned, these dissenting ideas are most often drowned in criticism because they are outside of the “acceptable or popular choices” (Zinn 4). By suppressing your beliefs, those who dissent your beliefs, maintain power. In my own life, I have been put in situations such as these. Over the years, many people have believed that since I went to a private Christian school, everybody that went to the school was uptight and living the right and moral lifestyle. But, contrary to this belief, there were many couples in the school that were actively having sex. When these people would come to me and say that they could hook me up with somebody that they knew to have sex with me, I always turned them down because I believe that you should respect women, and not have sex until marriage. This would always cause them to laugh at me and scorn me because in our world today, this is a dissenting idea to most people. By this, I mean that most people believe that whenever they feel necessary, they can just go and have sex because it is the popular and acceptable thing to do. Had I suppressed what I believe is correct, I would have given them power over me, and as a result, I may have began treating women like objects instead of treating them as they should be treated.
Metaphorically speaking, a great representation of how Zinn portrays the ideas of those in command is through “weeds.” A weed is a plant that overtakes the area in which it is located. Once it begins to grow, unless someone is willing to take the time to go and remove it from the area, it remains there. Likewise, the ideas that are seen in “Introduction: American Ideology,” are like weeds because they are established and passed off as right to the general public. Once these ideas are in place, they are hard to get rid of, even if many people dissent them. It must then take a strong group of people to try to “uproot” the ideas, and replace them with what the public believes is right.
Moving forward, I can use the information that I have written about and apply it to my own life. I should begin to feel comfortable in challenging what I do not believe in, rather than being neutral about the issue because as Zinn mentions, in this day and age that we live in, neutrality is seen as a sign of acceptance in the way things are now (Zinn 7). I now see that I should begin to be my own self, and not just another grain of sand on the beach, living by the status quo.

Works Cited
Gray, Elizabeth. Pretty yard weeds and more warblers in the woods. 2011. Connecticut. Web.

Zinn, Howard. Passionate Declarations: Essays on War and Justice. New York: HarperCollins, 2003. Print.