I totally agree which is why it sprung to mind so easily actually.
I remember those days with some fondness but it's hard for me to believe now how SERIOUSLY we all took it back then. Complete with cartoons being submitted to magazines with Mario ripping Sonics spine out via his head and such and the following threats of dire consequences. There would be appropriate ways to dress for each faction, jargon unique to each side, we had our own symbols etc.
The parallels to religious conflict are startling frankly. The difference was, we were expected to grow up and stop that rubbish. I'm still a fan of old Ninty to this day, but ones own maturity tends to allow one to see the ridiculousness in that kind of thing.
Whereas religion is treated so gravely and you even now have the Pope effectively making excuses for bad behaviour. Punching somebody for insulting your mother is not "normal". What world does this guy live in?
I really can't help but look at these situations and what are effectively members of Muhammad fandom acting out and then someone else's Dad saying you shouldn't have said Muhammad was a butthead if you didn't want to get hit. It's profoundly stupid.
I, personally, don't buy into the idea of "normal"; too many things in this world have basically convinced me that the concept itself is nothing but a social construct and incredibly detrimental to building an inclusive society.
That said, however, I am rather disappointingly surprised that the Pope, at the very least, was so careless with his words that even if he didn't mean them in these ways, they're getting interpreted that way. I still think he's a generally incredible person as far as Popes go, but that doesn't free him from criticism when he screws up, and this does count.
Agreed, and it's a good point.
But is seems that some cultures are quite resistant to change, and if change is necessary, what is the path forward?
Change is inevitable, no matter what course is taken, even if it's that of no-action. (It's already happening, in any case; once these fires die down, I think us and the Islamic world are likely to be culturally friends by this century's end.) However, it still behooves us to at least try to make that change as painless as possible for everyone involved. Question is, how do we do that without violating either of our rights in response to them violating ours?
Hm... looking to the past is generally a good way to at least get some inspiration. (We may not be directly involved with the solutions, but talking about it can provide me with material to use in stories; in any case, keeps the mind working.) When Rome sought to "civilize" the world around it, the least effective ones (at least as far as Germania goes) were those who tried military force. The most effective ones, from what I understand, were those who built Roman cities near, or past, the frontier. That way, the Tribes would see how much higher Roman standard of living was, and embrace it on their own.
Granted, I've long discarded the notion of vague, linear conceptions of cultural "progress" as a contemporary myth conceived to justify imperialism. (Though I do believe in specific instances of progress when a clearly defined goal is present, such as, oh, "be on friendlier terms, and more culturally compatible, with the Islamic world"; we did it with Japan and their culture is basically the perfect foil for ours). Rather, I think of things as cyclical. Currently, it's not that we were both in some "dark age" in the past and that we came out of it while they stayed behind; rather, the tables have flipped: we slowly recovered from a cultural apocalypse that came with the Western Roman Empire's fall, during which they were in a Golden Age much like we are in, now.
