“Oh, the farmer and the cowman should be friends,” sings Andrew Carnes in the 1955 musical, “Oklahoma!”:

One man likes to push a plough
The other likes to chase a cow
But that’s no reason why they cain’t be friends

The song takes a sarcastic turn as rancor between the two frontier castes begins to assert itself:

The cowman ropes a cow with ease,
The farmer steals her butter and cheese,
But that’s no reason why they cain’t be friends.

Herders and planters were at odds long before the territory called Oklahoma was seized from the Indians. The oldest written tale in the world, the Epic of Gilgamesh from Sumer, depicts a bar-clearing brawl between the king of farmers (Gilgamesh), and a wild man who runs with beasts and had never tasted beer or bread (Enkidu).

Rivalry is Intrinsic to the Human Condition 

To some Americans today, everything is about race and gender, with class sometimes thrown in. These social fault lines open up later in Genesis. But its author is wiser than our journalists, DEI commissars, political demagogues — and even, dare I say, Rogers and Hammerstein. He recognizes the ultimate sources of rancor.

The first farmer, Cain, grew angry with his brother Abel, a “keeper of flocks.” Their conflict did not, however, involve land, water, women or wealth. They shared race and gender. Both belonged to “Generation A,” and no mention of a wealth gap between them is made. So rivalry is intrinsic to the human condition, and is essentially religious.

Abel’s animal sacrifice was accepted by God, while Cain’s “first fruit of the ground” was rejected. Satan had tempted their parents to “be as gods, knowing good and evil for yourselves.” After their failed coup, Adam and Eve dared not challenge God directly: Adam blamed Eve instead, and she blamed the serpent.

Following his parents, Cain also tried, god-like, to dictate to the Almighty the terms of their relationship. Having been chastised, Cain similarly redirected his wrath towards a weaker target, his little brother, murdering him in the field.

Sociologists call this “scapegoating.”

A History of Rivalries

French thinker Rene Girard argues that competitive jealousy (mimesis) is behind rivalries in every community. Kings quarrel not merely over corn (as Marx predicted), girls (Darwin), or land or water rights, but for god-like power. They project their flaws on some convenient “Other” who becomes the “scapegoat” for a good lynching. Cain took his frustration out on his brother because God was too big to tackle.

Those who grow crops and herd livestock have long brawled. In The Art of Not Being Governed, Yale Political Scientist James Scott describes how lowlanders and highlanders warred for millennia in Southeast Asia.

Kingdoms grew up along rivers, scholars of the ancient world tell us. Cities, kingdoms, and peoples organized waterways to irrigate wheat, barley, millet, or rice. The king set his palace on a hill or acropolis above the city, next to temples of the chief gods, whose son he called himself. Then because disease spread quickly in packed urban quarters, the king sent armies out to drag hill people back to replenish his peasant population.

Sometimes herdsmen like Mongols and Tibetans would swoop down and return the favor, sacking cities and establishing new dynasties. To this day, many of the girls in the redlight districts of Southeast Asia were brought as captives from the hills to serve in brothels in Pattaya or Snake Alley.

The vulnerability of women is also raised in Roger and Hammerstein’s “epic rap battle:”

Aunt Eller:

The farmer should be sociable with the cowboy.
If he rides by an’ asks fer food an’ water,
Don’t treat him like a louse,
Make him welcome in yer house.

Andrew Carnes:

But be shore that you lock up yer wife an’ daughter.

The Bible tells how the Farmer and the Cowman became friends. (Even while unlocking wives and daughters, contrary to the song, as I will show in the future.)

Genesis says Pharaoh made a grab for Abraham’s wife. Later Pharaohs sought to selectively exterminate Abraham’s male line, saving girls, no doubt for breeding. The Bible does not exactly say “A pox on both your houses!” to farmer and cowman, but it describes the danger of both social structures.

“Everyone Did What Was Right in His Eyes”

The Book of Judges tells how things were when “there was no king in Israel (and) everyone did what was right in his eyes.” Deeply messed up! You get “heroes” like Samson, who receives powers from God to protect Israel, and surrenders them to a duplicitous wife, and a Levite who throws his concubine into the street to save himself against a mob of rapists.

So the Jewish people demanded a king, “like the nations around us.” The prophet Samuel reminded them that tyrants ruled the roost in surrounding nation-states. You will cry out to God for mercy as their feet press down on your head. The People insisted, and got a tall but whiny head-of-state named Saul.

Then God reshuffled the deck, and picked a shepherd named David. Because “power corrupts,” even this “man after God’s own heart” needed to be called on the carpet by the Prophet Nathan when he stole a woman and murdered her man. (By telling a story about a poor and a rich shepherd!) But otherwise, a trained herdsman turned out well-qualified to “shepherd my people Israel.”

Shepherds of Beasts … and Men

Many able rulers began their lives plying Abel’s career. God took David from watching sheep, and put him in charge of some of the oldest farmlands in the world, along the Jordan River. According to legend, Romulus, founder of Rome, was raised by a shepherd.

Regional governors in ancient China were called “shepherds.” When not leading warriors, George Washington raised Ossabaw Island Hogs, Hod Island Sheep, Dominique Chickens, and Red Devon Cattle at Mount Vernon. Great leaders of men often seem to practice leadership skills on beasts.

Jesus, the “Son of David,” called himself “the good shepherd,” who “lays his life down for the sheep.” Even at birth, he reconciled feuding bands. He was visited by magi, from an agricultural society, probably Persians who had long studied the stars, and also by “shepherds in the field, watching the flocks by night.”

His followers mostly belonged to a third branch of the agricultural community: fishermen. His parables refer to vine-dressers, farmers scattering seed, and a shepherd who “left the ninety and nine” to search for the lost sheep.

People Kill for Their Gods

Skeptics often complain, “So many wars started by religious fanatics — what a plague faith is!” Then believers cite the Encyclopedia of War to reply, “Only 7% of wars are religious! But atheists like Stalin and Mao shed rivers of blood!”

Genesis partly agrees with the atheists on this one. Murders are usually religious, if you define “religion” as one’s “ultimate concern.” Cain killed Abel for religious reasons: because his brother’s offering was accepted, while his own was rejected. People kill for their gods, even if only a few ounces of heroin, a car, or a neighboring land with wheat fields that used to belong to your tribe of “dialectical materialists.”

Moses understood geopolitics better than our Marxist, Freudian, woke, or evolutionary commentators. Putin and his generals attacked Ukraine not for more Wheaties, but “to be as gods,” because their macho egos fixated on the past glories of the Soviet empire. Hamas and the people of Gaza could live well, if they laid down the temptation of their Medieval Islamic glory years.

If China attacks Taiwan, it will not be for computer chips or even sex. (Though the one-child policy of past generations does create an incentive for young men to join up.) It will be for Gross National Ego. It will be because Xi Jinping’s self has swallowed his nation. He feels China has been disrespected (for reasons I explained here), and Mainland rulers want their collective comeuppance, like Jud Fry in “Oklahoma.”

A senior China expert at Defense or State once offered me a depressing picture of how little many of our China “whiz-kids” in the government understand that country.

Then Comes the Second Abel

To grasp geopolitics, read the Genesis story of self-deification, jealousy, mimetic rivalry, scapegoating, and the “Blame Game.” Then observe how the Second Abel “breaks down the barrier” between Jew and Gentile, frontiersman and aboriginal, “farmer and cowman,” and people of “every tribe, race, and tongue.”

 

David Marshall, an educator and writer, has a doctoral degree in Christian thought and Chinese tradition. His most recent book is The Case for Aslan: Evidence for Jesus in the Land of Narnia.