What are you reading the week of Sunday, April 12, 2015?

[hippywife]

23. I'm right there with Mrs. Enthusiast.

It can be so very hard to read some of it, since it's very real, factual historical events and circumstances into which he weaves the lives of his fictional characters. I can't even begin to imagine what drives the desire to destroy another human life because of a simple disagreement such as what one chooses to believe. It takes nothing short of a very sick and pathological mind to even conceive its necessity.

Or to even begin to think that such atrocities would influence anyone to truly and willingly embrace one's own deeply held religious beliefs. I'm certain, as witnessed by the Inquisition as only one example of the many, that they really don't care if they do or merely take it on out of fear, as long as it's the law of the land, and they hold the reigns of power. The attitudes and behaviors of the powerful towards the vanquished rarely ever improve, not even over time, no matter how much they appear to accept and adopt what's been foisted on them.

I have to believe that the majority of people everywhere wish nothing more than to lead a peaceful existence, and would do just fine living side by side with all they actually share in common, without the unreal perception that a different belief system is somehow an insult to themselves, or that arbitrary and artificial borders make them so very different. I honestly really don't care what someone's personal religious beliefs are, nor do I think very many others do either, as long as it's not used it to harm anyone or is forcefully imposed upon the unwilling.

Authors such as Michener, with his very accurate research into historical events, his very deep and rich depictions of the lives and deaths of the staggering numbers of very real people affected by them, have done what they could in an attempt to bridge divides and bring about understanding. Yet the pathologically power driven minority, with the support of those too weak and fearful to think and act for themselves, have made, and still make, all of this violence possible. So it's always been and, unfortunately, so it's always likely to remain.

Doesn't pay to get me started, does it?