I think it helps to know that each culture has its story, and to understand that usually helps understand their way of life. Similarly for person to person relationships, it helps to know their story, why they are the way they are, so you can better understand them and get along better.

You might enjoy some of the works of Joseph Campbell, who compares the mythologies of several geographical locations and you can see that they are just stories to help explain best they can what they knew and stories about morals and ethics that are meant as teaching tools, but not to be taken literally. You might enjoy the book or video of "The Power of Myth" by Joseph Campbell, an interview with Bill Moyers.

Once your realize that a religion is simply a mythology that has been taken literally instead of understood metaphorically in a literary sense, other religions and cultures make more sense. Those are my thoughts.

I see no conflict in appreciating other cultures without adopting their religions. I love Italian food, Indian food, Thai food, Greek, Spanish, Turkish ... no need to appreciate their religions.

Write in short sentences

The good ole duplicate post. Please delete two of your posts on this. Jeez, doesn't anyone ever go back after they write a post to see if the system posted it more than once?

Every nation is fucked up but most are fucked up because of religious inclusion. People are infinitely disappointing so I've also lost interest in them. Even those who aren't buying the religious thing spend a bunch of conversational time dispelling it, or trying to understand it (so they go into the stories). "Reality" becomes only of Intellectual interest and something to do, much like Chess, but it's unsatisfying. Nothing for it but to detach, let go of expectations, and find peace within. As that peace (free of anxiety) feels good it became my focus. Now I feel disgust and derision for society and try to focus only on the moment. Without past/future as significant to the moment they have also ceased to hold meaning but that's good because, really, they have none.

Why not take some sociology courses so you can start to look at them as "how did religion x influence culture y" or "how did the confluence of religions in this given region influence various socio-cultural-economic events" and other such questions. Religion has influenced so many different cultures, but that is a feature, not a bug. but nothing wrong with admitting it and using it as a lense to better understand "culture" (which I often simplify as "the way we do things here" ).