False History Syndrome

Many people are remembered as martyrs.
Nowadays the memory of their suffering
is always retrospective, and often written up
by people who lived that long after
that the suffering happened
that for the reports of the reported suffering
to have impact in the present day 
the suffering once endured has inflated,
to be present as the present day reports
of cause of present day suffering happening.

In the days of wars between Protestant and Catholic,
there were real sufferers and martyrs,
as evidenced in 'Fox's book of Martyrs'
-as complete a compendium of sadism and suffering
as could be compiled, that without the motive behind it
being clear it seems like such a graphic waste of life
that it is hard to credit why it happened.

It is now explained as the stirrings of nationalism.

Islam also has had it's splits and 'holy wars',
in which every side proclaims rewards for it's own
and punishment for the rest in the next life,
based on their group-think. 

In the present secular age,
with 'nothing to kill or die for',
and no particular 'side' to be on, 
martyrdom is hard to comprehend,
and yet many still kill, and many die,
for causes that they can no more stop
than stop themselves being absorbed by.

This proves that even with 'religion in decline'
division is not so in decline that citizens
can stop themselves being divided
by loyalties that are not loyal to life itself.