The Ten Commandments of The American Religion

Entrepreneur and author James Altucher on the ” Ten Commandments of The American Religion “:

If I stood in the center of Times Square and said something like “Moses didn’t really part the Red Sea,” or “Jesus never existed,” people would probably keep walking around me, ignoring what I said.

But if I stood there and said, “Going to college is the worst sin you can force your kids to commit,” or “You should never vote again,” or “Never own a home,” people would probably stop, and maybe I‘d lynched. But I would’ve at least gotten their attention. How? By knocking down a few of the basic tenets of what I call the American Religion.

It’s a fickle and false religion, used to replace the ideologies we (a country of immigrants) escaped. Random high priests lurk all over the Internet, ready to pounce. Below are the Ten Commandments of the American Religion, as I see them.

The first commandment is “Thou Shalt Own a Home”:

The American Religion wants you to have a home with a white picket fence. Why would the high priests of the American religion want that? A couple reasons:

So that you owe the banks money for 30 years or more (after second, third, or fourth mortgages). The banks need to borrow from your checking account at 0.5% to be able to lend right back to you at 8%. That’s how they make money and it’s one of the largest industries in the world.

Also, owning a home makes you less flexible in terms of where you can move. The job market is ruled by supply and demand. Supply of jobs in an area is finite. So they want to make sure you can’t move so quickly so that demand only goes up.

The other nine on Altucher’s list are:

#2 Thou Shalt Go to College.
#3 Thou Shalt Recognize that Some Wars Are Holy.
#5 Thou Shalt Give to Charity.
#6 Thou Shalt Obey the Food & Drug Administration.
#7 Thou Shalt Always Vote.
#8 Thou Shalt Choose Between Two Political Parties.
#9 Thou Shalt Recognize the Media as the “Fourth Estate.”
#10 Thou Shalt Forever Progress Toward the Frontier.

Although it’s an interesting concept, and I agree with many of them (1,2, 7, 9, and 10), I’d probably have a different set of unquestionable edicts. What would you list as the 10 commandments of the “American Religion”?