Us And Them

And so the juggernaut that is Groover's Pink Floyd Week rolls on until it bumps inevitably into "Us And Them".

"Us and them.
And after all we're only ordinary men.
Me and you.
God only knows it's not what we would choose to do.
Forward! He cried from the rear
And the front rank died.
The general sat and the lines on the map
Moved from side to side."

I've been re-reading The Bible just lately.
I know, I know; I'm a Godless heathen who says there's no God and no afterlife but I was prompted by an encounter in the British Museum the other week.
Dig around in the British Museum and you'll find all sorts of stuff from Biblical history. I spend way too much time in there.
I'd not read The Bible from cover to cover since I was a kid and I'd forgotten what a cracking good read it is.
So last night I'd read as far as Rehoboam. And it struck me that his is a good tale to put in an "Us And Them" post. So here goes:

Rehoboam was (as well as being a size of champagne bottle) Solomon's son and king of Israel, though it turns out he was a pretty crappy one.
Around 930 BC he inherited the throne and proceeded to make a complete asshat of himself, resulting in the division of his nation and the permanent loss of the ten northern tribes (yes, the same ten lost tribes of Israel that the tabloids are constantly finding in bizarre places around the world).
Most of the chapters in The Bible refer to the arguments between Rehoboam and Jeroboam (by sheer coincidence another size of champagne bottle; go figure …), who was Solomon's chief general, and of God's siding with Jeroboam against Rehoboam's folly.
It seems that the northern tribes were already pissed with Solomon for grossly and greedily over-taxing them and had agreed that they would make Jeroboam their king if he suceeded in a revolt against Rehoboam.
Well, that failed and Jeroboam scurried off to Egypt to hide out and lick his wounds. Meanwhile, Rehoboam went up to see the northern tribes and to listen to their case.

Stick with me; there is a point to all this guff.

The Bible has him taking advice from the wise elders that he should reduce the burden on the people and they would love him for it. You'd think that was sensible advice. He'd got warlike Egypt on his southern border and what he needed was a united nation with lots of people willing to fight for him.
Instead he goes off with his mates (a bunch of young tearaways and scallawags) who tell him to scourge the people with scorpions where Solomon has only previously scourged them with whips.
And the dork only goes and takes the advice of the stupid kids over the advice of the sage elders.
"Ha!" thinks God. "I've given these idiots the land of Israel so many times and every single time they fuck things up. Chosen People? Looks like I chose a bunch of fuckwits! Well … I've had it with 'em. I'm going for a lie down. I'll send my boy down later to pick up the pieces."
And off he toddles, leaving Rehoboam to reap the harvest of his own folly.

So Rehoboam grabs hold of his tax collector and says "Go tell the buggers I'm doubling their taxes", whereupon the tax collector is - somewhat predictably - stoned to death by the people and Rehoboam goes "uh-oh" and leaps in his chariot and high tails it back to Jerusalem.
The ten tribes bring Jeroboam back from Egypt and set him up as king and "there was war between them all their days".

This had the effect of trashing the country and the economy and allowed Egypt to invade the south. Rehoboam payed them off with all the treasure in Solomon's palace and his people did look upon him and shake their heads and say "Twat!".

Meanwhile, up north the ten tribes happily partied on for another couple of hundred years until the Assyrians conquered them. Assyrian policy was not to assimilate on the later Roman model but to drive conquered peoples from their land and to disperse them.
And so the ten lost tribes of Israel were indeed lost. A whole lot of them ended up living in Manhattan; others did stand-up in Vegas or moved to Hollywood. The rest are out there somewhere. The tabloids know where … Hey ho.

The point of all this is that history has a tendency to make greedy, venal and ignorant people leaders … the shit floats to the top. And that, even though there are lessons from history such as this one in all the holy books of all the world's religions, the idiots totally fucking ignore them.
The folly of Rehoboam was to have pursued policies contrary to his own interest. Greed and ignorance overcame common sense and resulted in war, poverty and far-reaching consequences that are still being played out in the Middle East today.
Modern leaders still disregard this simple lesson.
And I'm not just talking about Bush. Look around the world. There is war everywhere. Darfur, Indonesia, Chechenia, Congo, all over the fucking place.
And every one of these wars could have been avoided by looking at the lessons of the past and learning from them. Applying common sense over greed, ignorance and fear.

And of course we come back to the very things our governments use to keep us in check: ignorance and fear.
Fear = Control.

Our weapons have evolved since Biblical times; our brains it seems, have not.
Back then, desert tribal behaviour was based on ignorance, fear and mistrust:
Me against my brother;
Me and my brother against my cousin;
Me, my brother and my cousin against the stranger.

Us and them.

Fuck it. If we cannot learn from what's in front of our eyes we don't deserve any better.