These days I often think about the reasons, why sometimes ideas seem to be a reason for violence, no matter which idea it is.
Thoughts that come to my mind elaborating this question are often related to compensation of a lack of something. The history is full of examples of people who were aware that they lack something and tried to compensate this with the exaggeration of the state they would be in, if they would not lack something.
Now mankind lives in a time which provides a lot of knowledge from a scientific point of view. This knowledge might collide with some ideas certain beliefs provide. Even people who are not able to read and who have no direct access to this knowledge, might feel that there is a nameless threat to their perceived reality. As people are normally afraid of changes in their environment they try to protect it.
So it comes, that the subconscious or even conscious experience that things are changing and that some aspects of the scientific reality as well as the lived reality are about to invade a long fostered image of a particular belief.
At all times it was a normal human reaction to defend oneself with violence. And as the defended thing it now the possible core of a reality of a particular person or groups of persons, the defense is fierce and emotional. This defense is necessary, to show to oneself and to the others, that the own reality is still valid and exists, against all threats. The stronger the sign, the stronger is the support for this particular reality. So one can see burning objects and can see burning persons. An idea is protected with the destruction of important real things because it is this destruction, which transfers the idealistic weight of the destroyed objects to the idea.
A law of nature is that no transformation can be done without a loss of substance. To deny an already perceived new reality is always weaker than the positive support of a new idea. Nevertheless the fight of the desperate ones is the fiercest and most determined possible.
