Nihilism is a direct consequence of the helplessness and powerlessness that unrelenting class exploitation and oppression produce in a culture where everyone, no matter their class, is socialized to desire wealth - to define their value, if not the overall meaning of their lives by material status.

An Indonesian man who professed his atheism online was sentenced on Thursday to serve two years and six months in prison, according to the Jakarta Post.

Thirty-year-old Alexander Aan was assaulted by a mob and arrested after posting “God does not exist” on Facebook earlier this year. He was found guilty of inciting religious hatred.

“Alex simply stated his personal view on the topic of religion, yet he now faces years in jail,” Carlos A. Diaz, President of Atheist Alliance International, said. “This judgement is an affront to the principles of freedom of speech and freedom of conscience. Indonesia’s blasphemy laws are archaic, an embarrassment to a country that appears to be striving to join the developed world and should be repealed immediately.”

Endy Bayuni, the chief editor of the Jakarta Post, explained to Al Jazeera English on Wednesday that Indonesia’s constitution guarantees freedom of religion, but also requires that everyone “have a religion.” That provision of the constitution was meant to fight against communism, he explained.

Capitalism—a system where production is based on profit as opposed to meeting human need—means that manufacturers are constantly on the hunt to find new ways to sell new products, and new consumers to sell them to. Since the early 1900s, one strategy that U.S. industries found was to use marketing to manufacture various “problems” (insecurities, anxieties or fears) for which they could offer the perfect “solution” for sale.

Tragically, all too often these “problems” that advertisers pinpoint come down to a woman’s physical appearance. TV and web commercials, not to mention the increasingly unavoidable billboards across cities and highways offer the golden ticket to better skin, better hair and less belly flab, each of which is supposed to simply lead to a “better you.” Meanwhile, no part of the body is safe from the adman’s scavenging eye as marketers look to further existing insecurities as well as wholly create new ones.

In light of this, as U.S. advertising spending totaled a monstrous $144 billion in 2011 alone, it’s no wonder that such messaging might affect how women come to see themselves and their own personal sense of worth.

Numerous recent studies have pointed to an alarming correlation between negative body image and increasing rates of suicide and depressionamong young girls, much of which is attributed at least in part to the media’s bombardment of an unrealistic ideal of “beauty.”