Why was studying Anthropology useful?

 Anthro means man so Anthropology literally means: "The Study of Mankind".

I personally found myself most interested in Cultural Anthropology. I had already studied Comparative Religion along with a friend going to UCLA a lot by then and I found that what I learned in comparative religion made me want to know more about how cultures spawned religions.

It was a universal truth I found that Kings and emperors and Queens manipulated people's minds with hell, fire and brimestone in various ways through their religions worldwide for various reasons. This generally made the general populace both obedient scared and often dead before their times.

So, I began to see religions as ONLY instruments of people trying to gain power more than anything else by harming others.

So, by the time I got to studying anthropology I was interested in Tribes around the world, especially the ones that had had no contact with other civilizations at all which was still possible in the 1970s but not really now as much anymore. I found this fascinating.

I learned about one tribe in South America that worshipped a Wooden post in their tribal area. one day Termites finished eating this wooden post and it fell over after likely over 100 or more years of being worshipped sort of like a totem pole or something and all the people sat down until they died because without their post their universe ended. So, everyone in the tribe gave up and died.

But, I realized that some people around the world if they blew up for example Rome who were Catholics all might lay down and die without their pope and cardinals too. So, this made me think about how dangerous believing fully in any one religious organization actually is to one's long term survival.

There needs to be a way forward no matter what happens in your life to anyone you know. This seems important to me worldwide. Otherwise, when some symbolic wooden totem pole falls over from metaphorical termites or real termites everyone dies. "or more accurately they lay down and give up and die". 

Sort of like Qanon people might die now without Trump as president because at least as president I think he's finished for life after getting people killed at the Capitol building. Most people won't trust him at all anymore for ANYTHING.

At best he likely will leave the country at some point so he doesn't have to go to jail or get sued for billions of dollars by thousands of civil suits of people who died from Coronavirus by their families or the families of those who died during the Capitol siege on both sides or those who went to jail listening to him. or sued by those maimed for life (which are several hundred people now) from the capitol Riots on both sides.