As Yuval Noah Harari sets out in his epic Sapiens, a book rightfully loved by then President Barack Obama (my cousin, who read it in the original Hebrew, compared it to an excellent graduate course), human beings are unique among all the animals with our talent for organizing vast armies that march faithfully under banners of abstract, arbitrary beliefs. It is the human ability to adopt unshakable belief in powerful abstractions that has allowed all human triumph and thousands of years of human history written in the blood of every other creature, as well as the blood of Mother Earth herself.

No reason to get excited, faith is the cure for all pain. It is true belief that gives meaning to a terrifying and otherwise meaningless existence. Belief that love is returned, and earned, believe in community, in an all-powerful, all-merciful creator who bestows all gifts on each of us. The faith to love purely, intertwined with the faith to kill, righteously. You can look at human history, and the history of ideas, and see much nobility and many great ideas. But you will also see much mass madness and many horrific ideas embraced by entire societies.

What is it with these puny earthling motherfuckers, made in the image of gods who also don’t hesitate to allow unimaginable suffering to countless innocent children, doomed to their short, desperate lives? You’d have to ask your mullah, priest, minister, preacher, teacher, guru, Pope or rabbi, I suppose.