The history of civilization is the story of the beliefs originated or adopted by influential individuals. Every political movement, every religion, every philosophy has its beginning in the confident expression of a single belief.
This initial belief is probably put forth as a spontaneous comment. The more attention attracted by it, the more often it is repeated. Stay away from the tiger or it might try to eat you.

When the belief is repeated, it spreads and acquires the status of knowledge. As knowledge, it can be used to support further beliefs. It’s not safe in the jungle. Why? The tiger lives there.
Thus belief systems—bodies of knowledge—arise.

Belief systems appear to be a natural evolutionary process, but do they arise from a situation needing a solution or do they create a situation that needs a solution? Is the jungle dangerous because of the tiger or because of the beliefs about tigers? Do the expectations placed upon the tiger communicate a nonverbal suggestion to the tiger as to how he should behave? Is there a behind-the-scenes communication among creatures that choreographs their interactions in accord with some resolution of expectations created by their beliefs?
Unfortunately, before the general population had a chance to ask these questions, someone discovered that belief systems were valuable. As long as people could be made to feel a need for them, they could be traded for food, shelter, or safety. How- To-Deal-With-Tigers (or something analogous to tigers, e.g., snakes, hunger, depression, death, etc.) was a valuable belief system as long as the tiger could be relied upon to fulfill the role of dangerous predator. Adopting policies of shoot-on-sight helped to eliminate the tame tigers who weren’t fulfilling their role.

Over time, certain individuals, families, tribes, and finally even governmental organizations developed a strong vested interest in extolling certain belief systems. In many cases the belief system became the basis of the group’s economic survival. The sale of belief systems (or the social status obtained from the gift of belief systems) became the founding purpose for great organizations. Proselytizing religions were born. Taxation of the unorganized by the organized appeared. Architecture, art, and science evolved in service to the faithful believers.

To ensure that one’s organization would survive and prosper, carefully managed balances between “the tigers” and “the solutions to tigers” had to be maintained. Solutions that were too effective required the creation of more challenging, and thus more profitable, problems. New beliefs resulting in diseases, famines, and deadly human enemies superseded our fear of the tiger.

The belief wars began. When one group saw the power and influence conveyed to them by their special belief systems eroded by the introduction of competing belief systems, their young men were painfully indoctrinated with the group’s beliefs and formed into armies. Any detailed study of history will reveal an initial struggle between beliefs (an argument!) as the fundamental factor for conflicts on this planet.

Wars seldom addressed whose beliefs would create the best experiences, but were more a contest to determine whose beliefs (like offspring) would survive. In the end, the rightness of a belief was determined by the fierceness of its believers.

The irony of war was that entire civilizations fought to preserve belief systems that resulted in self-oppression and wrought greater self-destruction than even the deadliest weapons of their enemies. Fascism appeared.
Beliefs were enthroned. Compulsory schooling forcefully indoctrinated entire generations with beliefs. Beliefs grew in importance until they were more valuable than life. Any member who would not fight and risk dying for his group’s belief was considered a coward.

There was no equal in inhumanity to the battle fought in the name of the “true belief.” No quarter was possible when people fought for a sacred belief. No mercy was shown by or expected from the man who was convinced that his family’s honor, his country’s honor, and perhaps his own soul’s salvation was dependent upon the destruction of his “wrongly believing” enemy. The more blood that was spilled asserting a belief, the more sacred and infectious it became for successive generations.

More than once, beliefs about country, about God, and about economic needs have provided the justifications for world wars that have left the civilizations of the victor, as well as of the vanquished, in ashes.
Tolerance may be among the most important lessons ever taught.