In general, nothing applies in general...

We come again to an observation that I have observed in my life and have not read about anywhere else (yet). You see, I’ve noticed that although few and far between, most of us (from my life I could write that all of us, but I haven’t met everyone, have I? 😉 and there are certainly exceptions to everything) somehow subconsciously suspects or rather assumes that there are some generally applicable rules or laws or principles that the other person follows and abides by. It originated, as I am convinced, in childhood (like everything else we live and experience now 😉 ), when we had the impression, the feeling, that what our parents told us, and subsequently at school, was universally true, that everyone knows it, that everyone demands it of us anyway, and that everyone follows it. The trouble is that we all have slightly different rules, and so by simply talking we find that there is nothing generally valid. And that is why the first periods of defiance occur in most children, because they try to get others to fit into their boundaries, roles, and regulations, and are surprised that it doesn’t work elsewhere, or works differently. Is that understandable?
I’d rather use one such slightly less appropriate analogy that my father told me = when I first got married and went (me stupid :D) to help with the washing up, I put the already washed pieces on the drainer and got scolded that this is not the way to do it, that everything is wiped immediately so that there are no drops left. When I got married for the second time and repeated the same mistake – that is, I went to wash the dishes again, wiped them immediately and was again reprimanded that this is not the way to do it, that it is put on the draining board, because this way the cloth will soon be wet and nothing will be wiped with it. It’s different in every family, but in every family there is somehow an unspoken, unwritten expectation that this is how it’s done everywhere, that this is just the right way! 😀 I guess it’s more understandable now, isn’t it? 😉
And the specific application of this observation of mine? There are people who consider the Bible to be such a „general book of truths“. Nothing against them or against it (although I would personally have maybe a thousand objections – I myself have tried to live by the Bible for more than 17 years and so I have read it at least a hundred times, but that is not the content of this book, is it?) – so let everyone live as they please = unless of course they interfere with the „magnetic field“ of others in some particularly aggressive way, and that is the problem. It is a typical feature of the vast majority of Christian-Jewish-Muslim offshoots of religions, sects and communities (and I even know of one Hindu bunch, but again – I admit I cannot know them all absolutely) that they sometimes unspokenly but often quite openly sort of expect others to behave in the same way. The same according to their „universal“ procedure, approach, pattern. That is, according to their „universally applicable“ book, revelation, teaching, oral tradition, etc.
There is probably no point in my going into a specific description of the de facto atrocities this presumptuous approach has caused. Again, one almost common situation not far removed from, say, the decimation of Indian peoples and cultures suffices – and that is so-called missionary activity (please don’t confuse this with the missionary position – see? Even in such intimacies these people used to be able to interfere, to talk – that’s why it is called that…but I really digress :-)). Has it ever happened to you that Buddhists rang your home and wanted to meditate with you in peace? No? What is it? Well, our Christian-Jewish culture (and it doesn’t matter whether we consider ourselves religious or not or whether we run to church every Sunday) is characterized by this kind of condescension. That is, that we consider others to be total assholes. That we know how it is and nobody will tell us anything etc., right? 😉 And if the dumbasses don’t want to understand, we’ll take them right off the stick, right? After all, we are saved and we mean well with them, dammit! 😀