memes

Everything is relative

Yeah, but this is a cheeky meme. Less an issue of relative experience and more an issue of crusaders being zealous idiots who had no idea of the logistics of long distance travel. The history of the Crusades plays out more like a locust epidemic than a military campaign. It was half a year of religious militants moving from village to village along the Mediterranean coast, stripping small communities to the bone and vacuuming up other easily indoctrinated young men or butchering them if they were in opposition.

The Crusades were - at least at the outset - a European solution to the "surplus males" problem that have plagued civilizations with heavy concentrations of wealth since time immemorial. When you have a bunch of old people who are terrified of being murdered in their beds by upstart ambitious youths, you can promise them fantastic rewards for doing something absurdly dangerous and stupid. It wasn't a jaunt across the country for a week at the Useless Corporate Crap Convention. It was a kind of self-inflicted eugenics.