The Martyrdom Videogame

[Optimizzin Al-gorithm]

At 10:42 AM 10/5/01 -0700, Bill Stewart wrote:
>Just another example of the trend that you
>don't need to be religious to exercise religious bigotry.
>Hating other people and insulting their values
>doesn't require either understanding them
>or having values of your own.
>It's frustrating how rabidly intolerant a lot of
>ostensibly socially liberal people are.
>
>>Optimizzin Al-gorithm <oa at acm.org> wrote :
>>
>> > Christians need to start cultivating a
>> > martyrdom culture/generation. Maybe a
>> > videogame where you win by blowing
>> > yourself up and taking out a lot of
>> > drugdealers^H^H^H^Hmoslems^H^H^H^Hwhatever
>> > the fuck the bogeymen du jour are.

Actually this comment isn't about religions ---its about
what happens when a more aggressive culture meets
one less so.  The losers get to run casinos at best.

Guns germs & steel.  And suicide bombers.
A culture that has them has advantages over a risk-averse one.

My commentary also alluded to the demonization of the enemy,
done by the 'faithful' of both flavors.  I was sarcastic, ie expressing
author's disdain for this demonization.  This follows my
black humor, which is cynicism about the actual reality
of competing-civilizations (named by their dominant religion)
and the way they (ab)use their (young male) subscribers.

Thanks for the opportunity to clarify.