[ExI] Islamic culture (current) was Religions and violence >

[John Grigg]

Darren wrote:
I always thought that the majority of antisemitism in the middle-east
came from the occupation of parts of Palestine and the six day war.
But then I looked into it a bit more, and realized the hatred was
there long before, and has been present in the world since hellenistic
times and the byzantine empire. Jews have accused of everything
throughout the ages from poisoning wells to sucking the blood of
babies to trying to take over the world. Why? I often try to look at
things through a sociological or evolutionary lens, but this
particular phenomenon baffles me. Jewish culture has been particularly
beneficial to the world as a whole. So why the hatred?
>>>

I think part of it came from the Jews being seen as being very
different from the local mainstream populations in terms of religion,
and their general desire to stay distinct people religiously and
culturely, & not blend too much with the larger society.  When it
comes to humanity's darkside, appearing different can unfortunately
sometimes be fatal...

Finally, their great success in banking (in Medieval times Christians
were barred from money-lending, and so the Jews stepped in and greatly
succeeded in this niche) , business, writing, academia, various
crafts, etc, lead to definite jealousy and envy (especially against
those Jews who had become very wealthy).  And so especially when times
get tough, people will look to "outsiders" to blame their problems on
and persecute.  We all know how much the world loves a scapegoat!

I find it strange how Hitler expounded about a "master race," and then
tried to wipe out the Jewish people!  I think the Jews, in terms of
their accomplishments over the millennia (in business, the arts,
religion, politics, science, etc.) are perhaps closer to being a
master race than anyone else.  And the sometimes very painful forces
of social and biological evolution refined them into what they are
today.

John


On 8/11/10, Mike Dougherty <msd001 at gmail.com> wrote:
> 2010/8/11 Gregory Jones <spike66 at att.net>
>>
>> --- On Wed, 8/11/10, Sabrina Ballard <sabrina.ballard at hotmail.com> wrote:
>>
>> Isn't the cold war over? Or did we just put it on ice? (sorry >< I'm
>> rusty)
>>
>> Like antisemitism, communism never dies, but rather only sleeps, and then
>> only lightly.  Twentieth century communism came to an end on 9 November
>> 1989.
>>
>> Modern China is what happens when communism discovers the power of
>> capitalism.
>
> I thought modern china was coated with nanoparticles to resist
> staining and be dishwasher safe.
>
> _______________________________________________
> extropy-chat mailing list
> extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org
> http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat
>