Enos

Enos 1:14 For at the present our strugglings were vain in restoring them to the true faith. And they swore in their wrath that, if it were possible, they would destroy our records and us, and also all the traditions of our fathers. One of the great things about growing up in the west is that somehow I feel that I absorbed this idea that all men are created equal, and that anybody can work hard and succeed in life. Somehow I was blessed to grow up without inheriting any strong animosity towards any single group of people. (To be fair, I did believe that I hated the Russians for a long time, but I blame that more on Rocky and Bulwinkle than anything else.) When I look at the world now, there are so many groups of people who grow up quite literally hating one another for no other reason than group affiliation: the Jews and the Arabs, the racism of the south, the separatists in Spain and France, the Chechnyans in Russia, the list is as long as you care to make it. What is it that allows some societies to avoid that? Is it constant war that brings it on and lack thereof that makes it go away? How long do you have to live without war before the kids stop listening to the parents about how terrible another group of people is? The Nephites claim that the Lamanites want to destroy them, but by the time Zeniff goes to try to reclaim the original land of their inheritance, there are quite a few Nephites who hate the Lamanites just as much as the Lamanites hate them, with both sides feeling robbed by the other.