Patterns in Antiquities - 101

I'm just going to jump right in and draw a rough analogy for you, in the air in front of me, with my index finger, from memory, at 3 AM, so if it's not perfectly 1:1 scaled, please just excuse me.


I used to own several 1911 pistols, custom and semi-customized. I now have just the one remaining, because it was a gift from my father. 


The 1911 in my life, is very much like my Christian religious beliefs in that sense. They're relics, of my past and those of my father. He's still using his regularly. I still know where mine is, but it's a keepsake, and not something I carry around with me. I used to spend a lot of time learning the minutiae of the system, inside and out, as well as the history. Both were more useful by comparison to the alternatives, maybe, at earlier times, at least as a rough civilizing influence and to win wars, but it's complex, a bit heavy to carry, has a limited number of solutions in its original form, and  it might not fit all different types of people worldwide as well as it did me. If you're not an American, the inherent appeal might be lost on you, you might even be bewildered at the blind, slavish devotion to a following that, while effective in many things and still useful in a limited way now, has inherent imperfections that have been hugely corrected in, or at least left out of, some more recent iterations. Also, the temptation to proselytize exaggeratedly on the subject might also surprise non-natives. The smaller ones tend to have more issues holding up well under rigorous use, especially when others are watching. Finally, an over-arching reverence for an earth-walking messiah by the initials JMB or JHC, as your preference runs.


The analogy is not useful past this point, I have not noted all the clever potential similarities, and there's no follow-up "...and now I'll elaborate on why Glocks are more like Islam/Scientology/Buddhism - and Bryco is like a tiny, personal Jonestown!" because that would be ridiculous, and probably not true. I stand by the original statement, but it's an idle 3 am musing, not a revelation. Now that I put it into pixels, and released it into the wild, I find that don't need it to be true, just interesting.


Q-