They’re Rioting in Africa,
They’re Starving in Spain
There’s Hurricanes in Florida,
And Texas needs rain
The whole world is festering with unhappy souls.
The French hate the Germans, the Germans hate the Poles
Italians hate Yugoslavs. South Africans hate the Dutch.
And I don’t like anybody very much……..
You get the drift. In a quote attributed to Rodney King, “Can’t we just get along”? The little ditty, recorded by the Kingston Trio in the 1950’s, only illustrates the old French saying, “Plus ca change, plus c’est la meme chose” (the more things change, the more they stay the same). Why do people prey on others?
A very few examples: White European settlers vs “Indians”. Yes, I know, the settlers wanted land. As children, most of us were taught that the indigenous people got along with the settlers (the myth surrounding the first Thanksgiving comes to mind). The reality, however is starkly different. For starters, the Europeans wiped out numerous natives from disease. Over the next centuries, the natives were routed from their lands and herded onto “reservations”. It is little wonder that diseases of despair: poverty, alcoholism, drug addiction and other pathologies have all but wiped them out as a functioning people.
Then we have America’s Original Sin: Slavery. Although I’m not an expert in the field, it appears that wealthy (upper class?) Africans worked with the British and other maritime powers to buy “lower class” people to sell for a large profit to (wealthy) settlers in the New World. These folk needed the help: they were usually “gentlemen” who had never worked manually at anything.
Jews. Israel is very much in the news lately, while Hamas (proxy for Iran?) ravages the “Jewish state” for all it’s worth. Since its founding in 1948, Israel is the hands down success story in the Middle East. Its military can likely pound Hamas into the stone age. This is, however, an old, old story, ranging from progroms in the 19th Century (think Fiddler on the Roof) to the Holocaust in the 20th. Why? The Jews are too damn successful. The culture values education. Their people are much more likely to be professionals. Or shopkeepers. Or other business owners. This engenders envy on the part of less successful cultures.
I well remember going to college with numerous Jewish students, many of whom were trying to become MD’s. Med schools back in the day actively discriminated against them. Competition for grades was, to say the least, cutthroat. For example, (caution: chemistry lesson coming up….) I took a course in qualitative organic analysis. To determine which other elements were bonded to carbon, one conducted a “sodium fusion” test. Using a disposable test tube, we would heat sodium metal with the unknown and then plunge it into cold water, thus breaking the tube. Obviously, numerous test tubes were broken. Long before the semester ended, the stock room ran out of them. At the end of the semester, one student was found to have hoarded the whole supply. A Jewish kid looking to claw his way into medical school.
How about women? The “weaker sex” that outlives men, can endure much more suffering (check out childbearing, guys). Our groundbreaking republic didn’t allow them to vote for the first century of its existence. On the other hand, our British forbears had heads of state from the 17th Century (Elizabeth I), the 19th (Victoria) and Elizabeth II in the 20th and 21st. Israel had Golda Meir in the 1970’s. India, the world’s largest democracy, was ruled by Indira Ghandi. Then, the U.K. ‘s Iron Lady, Margaret Thatcher, prevented Ronald Reagan from “going wobbly” in the last decade of the 20th. Perhaps it is in the arts where humankind has mostly been deprived of female accomplishments through male chauvinism. Music has benefitted from the talents of Clara Schumann, Fanny Mendelssohn, Amy Beech and others who have never been recognized, or performed, nearly as much as men of inferior talent. The situation is changing rapidly in this century, as a consequence of male slackerhood. WAKE UP, GUYS!
Why do we hate so much? St. Luke proposed one solution: “The pursuit of money is the root of all evil”. Maybe so.
They’re Rioting in Africa
There’s Strife in Iran
What Nature Doesn’t Do to Us,
Will Be Done by Our Fellow Man
Rogernarc 