nightdog_barks | (Reply)

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I have direct experience of a similar attitude in modern times. Scattered here and there where I live are great stone constructions made by First Nations people. They are medicine wheels -- stone spirals of great spiritual and cultural meaning. Most are located on private land, and few people here even know they exist apart from the First Nations people who still use them, and the landowners upon whose property they stand. I have been sufficiently fortunate to visit several. I am always awed, as I would be by the greatest cathedrals or other sacred structures. While I was visiting on more than one occasion I witnessed other visitors (instead of being reverent) deliberately moving stones, defacing them, or scraping their feet on them in a gesture of contempt. They are threatened that such things exist, which are not part of their own particular narrow parochial branch of Christianity. On one occasion when I was in uniform (and so perceived as authority, though my actual authority has nothing to do with the subject and is very small) I even evicted two such desecrating scum with a firm "Right, it's time for you to leave. Now.". They whined and grumbled and left, and the interpreter thanked me because she knew they would not have heeded her had she spoken up.

Their needs, their desires, their religion, their culture... they are all that matters in their eyes. Everything and everyone else is lesser. I know that this mode of thought exists, though I do not share it.