[berntb]

Thanks, will read after work. :-)

It was surprising.

From what I've read, people living for a long time in dictatorships are quite intolerant and hateful. (There were quite a bit of intolerance in East Germany after 1989, too. And examples from Eastern Europe are well known.)

If/when the Arab world get rid of the dictators controlling the media and education gets better, they should become more "normal".

Or maybe I am too liberal in assuming every culture will walk the same path as us. I doubt it. Until someone comes up with something that works better, liberal [edit: and ~ capitalist] democracy is the least bad alternative.

[pjc50]

The general public aren't all that liberal even in the liberal west. It seems to be a question of security: the more secure people feel, the more willing they are to let others do their own thing. Whereas if their own economic or security situation is bad, they're much more likely to interpret difference as threat.

[tdkl]

No, you're just naive in that a community ruled by religious narratives will suddenly jump to democracy. Look at age of enlightenment. They never had one.

[douche]

The age of enlightenment only came after a series of religious/civil wars that wracked Europe for hundreds of years, set brother against brother, depopulated and ravaged huge swatches of Germany, central Europe and France, and essentially broke the temporal power of the churches and the papacy.

That's not the most pleasant blueprint to follow...

[cstross]

Correct. The Thirty Years War killed about a third of the population of the Germanies; the Wars of the Three Kingdoms (often erroneously called the "English Civil War" -- there were at least five wars, in England, Scotland, and Ireland) killed about 10% of the total population of the British isles.

Those wars scared everybody who'd grown up in the affected territories off religious absolutism for a very long time -- at least, off religious absolutism by the standards of the time: things were still grim by modern standards -- and created an environment in which philosophers could develop the ideas and concepts of the enlightenment without being burned at the stake for heresy.

The Arab world looks to be on the skids heading towards its own equivalent of the Thirty Years War right now. I just hope the eventual outcome is positive, and that they get to it faster and with less bloodshed.

[berntb]

I passed the small museum of Turda ("unfortunate name", as the Lonely Planet Guide put it) in Transylvania.

Around when we were doing the 30 year war et al in Western Europe, the East Europeans of the area were writing edicts about religious tolerance. (Yes yes, a deplorable lack of fashion sense.)

That example sadly seems unlikely right now. But since soon all minority groups are thrown out of the Middle East, there won't be anyone left to hate (except for those that move to Western Europe).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edict_of_Torda

[tdkl]

And yet that was the result. The price paid for it was enormous and it took time. The question is only if we're willing to repeat this in Europe again.

[SixSigma]

> If/when the Arab world get rid of the dictators controlling the media and education gets better, they should become more "normal".

When will the West do that ?

[berntb]

Since you won't risk any problems for implying that the Western countries are oppressive dictatorships, that warps the culture to hatred of others -- I'd say the West have gotten a little bit on the way. :-)

(assuming you live in the Western world.)

[autokad]

it was that liberal philosophy that the administration thought it would be a great idea to destabilize and kill the dictators that created this hot mess.

many of the dictators are either dead or crippled, and the world is awash in more terrorism than ever before.

[maverick_iceman]

Correlation doesn't imply causation.