The
problem described in the book of Esther illustrates some of the political and
social problems that plague our societies now in the 21st Century. I think you will see that this Bible story is
not so very “out of date.” The same problems with the development of cultural
conflict in the world of the ancient Jews exist in today’s development of “identity
groups.” You will see that political forces working in Queen Esther’s time are
still operative even in 21st Century America.
To
begin this discussion, I need to define what is meant by “human capital.” Human
capital may be defined as the
skills, knowledge, and experience possessed by an individual or population,
viewed in terms of their value or cost to an organization or country. Human capital refers to the production
factors, coming from human beings, that are used to
create goods and services. Our knowledge, skills, habits, and social and
personality attributes all form part of the human capital that
contributes to the creation of goods and services. Creativity also contributes.
Examples of human capital are the tendency to work hard, get educated, obtain
on-the-job experience; the development of human capital includes a wide radius
of trust among the group members so as to allow one person to reliably trust
other members of the group. Thus, with lots of human capital and a wide radius
of trust, it becomes easy to do business without a lot of government
regulation.
As
cultures and nations develop, there is an easily recognizable political problem
that arises when two or more ethnic cultures live side by side, either in one
single nation or in neighboring nations. The problem of conflict begins when
one majority cultural group lags behind a minority cultural group in their respective
possession of human capital. The Jews
have traditionally surpassed many other cultural groups in the possession of
human capital. This tendency has produced cultural resentment among majority
cultural groups who feel forced to compete with the Jews. Of course, this
feeling of resentment is not limited to cultural interaction with Jews only.
Resentment builds up among societies that find themselves living with other
cultural groups who have different amounts of human capital (or, in other
words, different skill sets). Disparities of income and wealth among groups
with different amounts of human capital produce resentment that often breaks
down in violence; such was probably part of the problem with the Jews and
Persians in the 5th century BC.
When
one social group is lagging behind a more successful social group, living next
to them a challenging situation will often develop. This situation presents a
logical opportunity for a lagging group to better itself by acquiring the
skills of the more advanced group through following their example in
development of technical and administrative skills. This can be done through
efforts of the lagging group to learn from the examples set by the more
advanced group. Knowledge is one of the few things that can be transferred
to others without those from whom it is transferred having any less for
themselves. So…it seems only logical for a lagging group to learn the
skills being demonstrated by the more skillful group and thereby improve the
life situation of the whole society.
Unfortunately,
this is not the way it works out in practice very often. What usually happens
is that opportunistic politicians latch onto the differences in skill sets and
make the most of the unfortunate situation for their own personal aggrandizement
politically. These politicians will follow a familiar trajectory in their
speeches. They will play on the resentment felt by the lagging majority group,
define the situation so as to show how “put upon” the lagging group is by the
skillful and more advanced neighboring group and, thus, to spotlight every drop
of resentment they can in order to gain control for themselves. This process is
currently being described by the development of isolated “identity groups”
deliberately setting one group against another. We can see this process being
worked today, particularly by such politicians as Kamala Harris, Bernie
Sanders, Elizabeth Warren, and a whole host of Democrat presidential
candidates.
Modern
examples of this sociological phenomenon are many. In the late 19th
and early 20th Centuries, the Armenian peoples of what is now
eastern Turkey were severely persecuted by the then current leaders of the
Ottoman Empire; a blood bath of persecution broke out, and thousands of
Armenians were killed. The Jews of eastern Europe and Germany were targeted by
Hitler and millions were exterminated. The conflict between Tamils and
Sinhalese of Sri Lanka were set against one another by an opportunistic
politician, Solomon Bandaranaike—thousands were slaughtered in the ensuing
rebellion, although before Bandaranaike they had lived peaceably together for
many decades. Bandaranaike was the catalyst that started the whole destructive
process. In Nigeria, a skillful tribal group (the Ibos of the southeastern part
of the nation) was set upon by the Hausa-Fulani tribal group in the north; and
the Biafran conflict resulted in thousands of Ibos being killed. Chinese in the
Philippines are among the many productive groups whose economic success has led
to violent backlashes. When Romania acquired territory from the defeated
Central Powers after the First World War, this territory included universities
that were culturally German or culturally Hungarian. The Romanian government
made it a political priority to force Germans and Hungarians out of these
universities, even though most Romanians were still illiterate at that point
and so could not replace the Germans or Hungarians. The expulsion of Asians
from Uganda in the 1970’s led to the collapse of the Ugandan economy, because
there were not enough qualified Ugandans to replace them in the business sector
that people from the Indian subcontinent had been managing. The same pattern
occurred in Rwanda in the late 20th Century when Hutus slaughtered
hundreds of thousands of Tutsis. All this, being said, does not even mention
the persecution of the Jews in Russia under Stalin where approximately 20
million Jews were exiled to Siberia and most of them were executed. Chairman
Mao systematically starved millions of his people to death using the identity
group method to get rid of the intelligentsia in China in the early 20th
Century. Pol Pot, the leader of the Khmer Rouge was a brutal dictator who ruled
Cambodia from 1975 to 1979. Pol Pot's attempts to create a
Cambodian “master race” through social engineering ultimately led to the deaths
of more than 2 million people in the nation and destroyed about half of the
entire population.
By
encouraging resentment among a majority lagging group, those seeking either the
leadership or the votes of lagging groups tend to offer them four assurances:
1.
Assurances that their lags are not their
fault.
2.
Assurance that their lags are the fault of
some advanced group that they already envy and resent.
3.
Assurance that the lagging group and their
culture are just as good as anybody else’s if not better.
4.
Assurance that what the lagging group needs
and deserves is a demographically defined “fair share” of the economic and
other benefits of society, sometimes supplemented with some kind of reparations
for past injustices or some special reward for being indigenous “sons of the
soil.”
Such
are the forces working in our society, today. Groups are being developed and
identified as described above—presently under the impression that income
inequality can be remedied best by the governmental operation of money
redistribution. The wealthy in our country, today seems to be the identity
group that is receiving the brunt of criticism and blame for the unfortunate
situation perceived by the less accomplished in our nation. It seems to me that
the forces working in the administration of Xerxes is still functional in
American politics.
It
should be said that this tendency toward social disintegration does not
necessarily have to happen. There are the examples of Scotland in the 18th
Century and Japan in the 19th Century where a lagging social group
chose a more constructive route to take in order to better themselves without
violence. Both of those nations rose to world prominence by educating
themselves and adopting the more successful roles of their envied neighbors. Similar
favorable behavior and policy also occurred in South Korea, Hong Kong, and
Singapore. These examples show that it is not necessary to inflame identity
groups in order to produce good effects in a nation. (Data from this paragraph
was gleaned from a book, “Wealth, Poverty, and Politics,” by Thomas Sowell.)
If
I could do anything about our present economic situation in the U.S., I would
wish that people who want to better themselves would work hard to learn the
skills of the more affluent. Then, all the people would be better off. Reparations and other devised techniques of
money transfers will never solve the problems of our society.
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