[Exsubmariner]

I've been sucked in now.
I have always viewed bigotry (any shade thereof) as taking two forms. The first is benign. Feeling that you are superior and feeling sorry for someone or wanting to "save the world" or "show people the one true (my) way." The second is malicious. That is, using said bigotry to go exterminate people of competing ideologies, economies, etc and take their wealth. I once fell in love with the idea of viewing history through the lense of bloodlines. I found, though, that this is a flawed idea from an academic perspective because it can only be used as a argument to define a finite number of historical events. Not all of them. I then adapted my view to focus through the lense of resources (wealth). Wealth takes many forms. You can look at history as a quest by whomever to acquire whatever form of wealth and it all makes sense. Sometimes whole nations just use excuses to murder and steal. I can't think of a people or nation where this has not at one time been the case.
As far a religion goes, I like to think about Jesus as the first humanist (for lack of a better term). Love everybody. It makes no difference who they are. Of course, people tragically perverted this message and made a religion which followed the path of every other religion before or since. Someone eventually came along who used it as an excuse murder and steal.
In every time, there will be someone somewhere who is motivated to murder and steal. If they can find an excuse to justify it, I guess they feel better about doing it. In the end, it is still murdering and stealing.
Why can't we all just play poker?
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