{Your tribe against mine. That’s what it’s all about. That’s what humans are. That’s what we do. Violence is the ordinary. Peace and respect are the shocking things.}
I’ve been a Catholic all of my life and during my growing up I never experienced a single instance of the thoughts and experiences you just wrote about.
You talk of a ‘dog eat dog’ world and that was is just foreign to me.
You grew up in a whole different environment than I did.
LOL. You're living in it. Maybe not in your neighborhood. But that's sort of what I was talking about with the 'sheltered' thing.
I guess what I'm trying to say is- you have to realise that with the 'safe, sheltered environments' that many of us find ourselves in, this is not the norm. Most of the world is not like this at all. The norm for the world is suffering, quick and brutal lives and violence and corruption in every direction.
One could probably say that 98% of all our current problems are not down to that harsh truth but on the failure of Western Culture in realising that harsh truth. We live in a small bubble. It seems rather big because it has everything we have been taught to desire. The mistake we- as conservatives AND liberals- make is, we assume everybody else is basically like us. And they're not. Their lives are different. Out there in the world, people get f---ed over. HARD. And it's a way of life.
And when I say 'out there in the world' I don't just mean in other countries. Right in your own country you would find things that absolutely shock you going on right and left- right under your nose. People leading lives of incest and abuse, kids with violence as a routine and normal part of their existence. People so ignorant of anything better it would break your heart to talk to them.
It's not just about growing up in a different environment. I've gone out and looked at the world a bit. It's an eye-opening thing. And it's out there. Right now.