vision-lk
Ethnic Separatism
In cultures that are primarily individualist, each person is considered unique. In collectivist cultures, each person is considered as part of a group, tribe or class through which they derive their identity. When the flourishing of the individual is not supported, people resort to group bargaining as both offense and defense. These group affiliations can be quite arbitrary and situational. It may be that all teachers or engineers group together to make demands based on their area of occupation.
In a country strapped for resources, the struggle for resources often induces the grouping of individuals based on ethnicity, language or religion. These often manifest as ethnic or religious rights movements. At the core, these are just simple-minded attempts to use shared identity to demand their piece of the pie based on historical categories. They desire a specific class identity that has lifetime permanence, stability and security with a predictable and comfortable future.
Once the demands are won, however, they still have to share the pie. This demands subcategories or subclasses with centralized planning, control and resource management based on group identity. This, in turn, demands iconic totalitarian dictators with godly powers and wisdom — hello Russia, China, Cuba and North Korea. It would be a mistake to exclude Singapore. Economic development is a game of cultural transformation often undertaken — unfortunately — with no elegance or sophistication, not to mention quality of heart and spirit.
In pre-dictatorship environments, this approach to life manifests as identity politics, a complete mess of artificial, arbitrary and inflexible fragmentation of society primarily motivated by economic survival. Is that all life is — economic viability? Sad! More significantly, the rights problem has not been solved — only merely postponed — waiting to facilitate further subcategories to emerge, bargaining for their piece of the pie. Interestingly, this creates demand for dictatorship — the one, only, correct and authoritative pie division system.
Velupillai Prabhakaran became the military front of the Tamil people to fight for their right piece of the pie. They wanted a separate state — their own piece of land — for them to rule. Had they succeeded, Prabhakaran would have been the newly crowned dictator of the Tamil people. After a 30 year protracted civil war, the movement was crushed in 2009. Yet, the problem remained.
The ultimate solution, however, is to move away from class identity and celebrate individual uniqueness. No matter which ethnic or other group you come from, you need to be treated fairly. That requires a certain kind of culture — democratic liberalism coupled with market capitalism for dynamic and adaptive division of the pie.
In the end, however, life is much more than just pie.