Why do we, as human beings, always manage to justify behavior in ourselves that we condemn in others? Why is it so convenient to cast one human or an entire group of humans aside? It doesn’t matter if you’re on the rejector or rejectee side: at various times in your life, you will find yourself on both of them.
Insecurity is a strong motivator, and anybody from the schoolhouse bully to the radical extremist is proof of that. The problem is this: if your ideas are so good, it would be easy to attract followers, but if you have to frighten people or kill to get your point across, it might be time to rethink the idea.
Religions like Christianity and Islam don’t base their principles on killing the non-believers, but on the idea that if one shows by example that it is good to be what you are, then others will want to be part of it also.
Of course there are those who don’t feel that way; kill all the folks who are different and they think that all who will be left are the best people. No two people are exactly alike, so unfortunately the only way to get such a Utopian world is to clone one perfect person millions of times and replace everybody with clones. Scientifically that won’t happen. Ethically that’s wrong, and morally how could we decide whom to replicate, and could we do that at the expense of our own lives? Finally, in reality, nobody wants the world to be that boring.
Sure there will always be people out there who just want to annihilate others so they can feel a little better. There will always be bullies, radicals, and a pecking order. At least until we recognize within ourselves that it’s wrong to perpetuate them just because they have always existed.
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