For all the politics, one professor noted that the real cause was economic differences between three distinct ethnic groups; Ibo, Hausa, and Yourba. The former, a trading culture, was outdoing the latter two, pastoralist cultures, in accomodating to the twentieth century. Also, the Ibo were a minority.Thus they were to be attacked, or at least looted and controlled. Same-same. Chinese in Indonesia. Jews in Europe. Indians in South Africa. Pentecostals in Latin America. Hugenots in France.

There’s an element of truth in that without being entirely true. Any Chua argued that opportunities which allowed “an accumulation of wealth by ‘market dominant minorities’ combine[d] with an increase of political power by a disenfranchised majority” usually creates instability. It creates envies which demagogues exploit. She appears to argue that some kind of socialistic redistribute method be implemented to offset the resulting envies.

She’s right about the demagogues. Hitler could argue that the Jews were leeches because they were rich. All over the Malay barrier, including the Philippines to some extent, the Chinese are seen as “evil” because they are so successful. Inevitably some people will begin to accuse Christian Africans of oppressing Muslim Africans if Christian Africans turn out to be richer than Muslim Africans.

But I’m not sure that compensatory redistribution is the answer. In assigning black hats and white hats, the direction of causality is not always clear. Since any cultural advantage will tend to create the picture of oppressor/oppressed the Left is looking for to judge a situation, the trap is that the Left will use success as a proxy for oppressiveness, even when no foul play was involved.

So since the object of villainy is loot, it is often true that those with the loot are the villains, but it is not always true that the successful are villainous. We go back to the problem I raised in the main post. Suppose Christianity provides a better guide to life in that it fractionally reduces the dysfunctional tendencies in a society, then by a compounding process, the groups which steal, lie and murder a little less will ever so slowly pull ahead. By and by, some of these groups will become perceptibly richer than the others and the Left will point the finger of blame. ‘See it is the Christians who are the black hats!’ But the correspondence between success and villainy is an inexact one.

The logical solution to this problem is to spread the wisdom around, what we sometimes call “technological diffusion”, where technology can be social technology. But this is politically incorrect. It conflicts with the Prime PC Directive that “all cultures are equal”; so the technology diffusion solution is out; by elimination the remaining solution is to make everyone equally dysfunctional. That gets rid of the envy. To fix the problem you take from those that can and give to those that need. “From each according to his ability and to each according to his need”. And this, not in the context of technological diffusion, but as an end in itself. The commenter above who remarked that “socialism is militant mediocrity” was on to something.

But the experience with the leveling approach has not always been good, as the history of the 20th century, now conveniently forgotten, shows. If all we can do is repeat the solutions of the 1930s, maybe the 21st century will never really get to take off on its own terms. The key may be to allow peaceful competition between memes and to let people make an unforced choice about which they wish to choose without some kind of mandate from a higher authority. They are likely to cross fertilize each, but always within the awareness that some ideas are better than others, otherwise nobody will know the direction of improvement.

Maybe the biggest problem with political correctness is that it’s abolished the notion of an objective function and replaced it with a blame game in which even virtue and vice are determined by proxy indicators.