Unfortunately, along with this evolution of male dominance came a belief that females were not equal to males and, therefore, could be used and abused. Because males have been typically endowed with greater physical strength than females by nature, they naturally became the dominant humans in tribes and then societies, not much differently than the dominance of alpha males in various animal societies, and they used their power to control and use material goods and people to serve their wishes. Similarly, males have used and abused females throughout history. This abuse of others happened because the Roman Catholic Church and Christian Europeans of the 17th, 18th, and 19th centuries believed that non-Christian people from different cultures were primitive and subordinate human beings who did not qualify to be treated by the laws and rules of western civilization. Or, think about the way we treated the Native Americans of our country when we took their land without negotiations of any merit and broke families up in order to Christianize their “heathen” children. Think, for example, of the way we treated Africans when European and American Christians broken families to capture and then subordinate those taken from their homeland to slavery. Quite frequently, the thems are somewhat dehumanized by the uses giving uses the right to treat those who are seen as different from them in demeaning or abusive ways. They may treat them with disdain and distrust, or they may treat them with pity, with a desire to save them, but they do not treat them as equals human beings. In all these cases, those who believe they have the right way separate themselves from those who don’t and create an us versus them attitude by which they treat others differently than those who believe their way. These are the extremes of the way people who believe they are right and righteous can behave, but there are many less extreme people who also believe that they have the right answer, either through their God’s word or through their national patriotism or loyalty to their leader.
All we have to do is remember the Inquisition, Hitler, and today’s Jihadist Muslims. History proves this observation about people. The most dangerous people in the world are those who believe that their way is the right way.