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Flags & Diversity
Pulling in Opposite Directions
After being separated from black-skinned Africans by distance & vastly differing cultures for many millennia, the Europeans were convinced that such Africans were less than human & began treating them accordingly. Some whites may have realized that we were all the same but they needed an explanation for themselves to calm their conscience-searing cognitive dissonance for treating the Africans as work animals.
For different ethnic groups or religious communities to alienate themselves from others & to alienate those others from them would seem like a serious lapse in judgement, yet this is how most people are. They feel a lack of something & turn to nationalism, patriotism, & religious chauvinism to fill that void, that fear of weakness & vulnerability. In so doing, they create the divisiveness, intolerance, & exclusivity which has proven catastrophic when groups & their needs rub up against each other, each claiming their right to whatever it is: power over the others, a territory, or some other resource.
The one that makes my head explode is how the Jews, while living midst scores of other identity groups, have had the gall to still insist to this day, despite everything that they have suffered throughout their history, that they are god’s “Chosen people.” No more insane & suicidal way of acting in a world…