Cultural Values Matter

You can interview many people from a certain city, or part of the country, and find out a lot about what people believe, what their attitudes are, what the "cultural values" are for any group of people.

And this is very important, its important to study this, and for people to understand such things. Here are two good examples why.  Back in the nineteen thirties, forties, and early fifties, joseph stalin was the "president" of the Soviet Union, they quaintly called it, though in reality stalin was more of a divine pharoah - god - king who presided over the state religion, which was communism.

Under Lenin and Stalin communism was everything, the only thing, in the russian empire, (quaintly called "The Soviet Union"); the virtues of the communist system were brain washed ceaselessly into the masses, and anyone who did not enthusiastically and wholeheartedly accept this was in for hard times, subject to arrest, incarceration in siberian labor camps,a date with a firing squad, or confinement  in mental facilities.

That's right, mental facilities. The truth of communism is so obvious, the argument went, that anyone who does not devoutly embrace communism must, by definition, by mentally ill, crazy, and should be locked up for the good of everyone, including the mentally ill non communists.

In 1692, in salem, massachusetts, over twenty people were executed after being accused of being "witches", and put on trial, in this community of christianity run amok, cultural values, attitudes entirely twisted into insanity.

Large groups of perfectly intelligent can all go off the deep end at the same time, and turn their world into a living hell, simply through the widespread acceptance of insane notions, most commonly insane notions about which type of people are good, and which type are bad.

The better educated any group of people is, the better that group's chances of avoiding disastrous values causing disatsrous behavior. But among humans, reasonable behavior cannot ever be taken for granted, either among individuals or nations.