On the suppression of human potential

After the Nazis invaded Poland in 1939, Heinrich Himmler instituted a policy that "untermensch” Polish children would only be educated up to grade 4, learn to count solely up to 500, learn that God had commanded them to be slaves to the Germans, and never learn to read. Similarly, less than a century earlier, it was made a crime to teach African American slaves how to read and write. In the 19th and early 20th Centuries, entire classes of impoverished children in North America were discouraged from going to school so they could work in factories, mines, and on farms as cheap labor to help support their struggling families whereas children of wealthier parents would be able to fully attend school and lead a life of leisure, managing the wealth inherited by them. These "elite” classes lived from the profits garnered by the lower class workers. The underlying message in all of these tragic stories is the same: Keep one class of human beings ignorant, impoverished and desperate so that a "higher”/parasitic class of human beings would be educated, prosper and be permanently separated/ "elevated” from the lower uneducated classes.

In another glaring example of class warfare, there have been numerous instances where controlled substances (opium, meth, marijuana, etc.) have been introduced to different groups (e.g. in China and in America's inner cities) with an aim of destroying human intellectual potential and keeping millions addicted, desperate and impoverished. Of course, skin color was used to segregate human beings. But language has also formed artificial barriers (e.g. Polish versus German) when otherwise, one would not notice a significant difference between a blonde and blue eyed Polish dziewczynka and blonde and blue eyed German mädchen. And in other cases, (e.g. the Roman Catholic Irish in the US and Britain, and Orthodox Christian Serbians in Catholic Croatia), religion was used to divide, persecute and subjugate different peoples. More subtle differences (e.g in dialect) have also been used to distinguish the "high” classes vs. the "low” classes such as discussed by George Bernard Shaw in Pygmalion. In many countries, where you attended university, how much money your parents make, and where you grew up are also often used to differentiate/"classify" people. The point of this myriad classification of different tribes of humans is allow one group to succeed at the expense of others.

Himmler obviously knew that Polish children were just as capable as German children at counting far beyond 500 (and any other children too), but the key point was to perpetuate the "uber-” vs. "unter-” mensch fantasy as an excuse/justification to suppress the human potential of millions of Polish people (and other "undesirable” peoples such as Russians, Serbs, Gypsies and Jews) by limiting and stultifying their education, thus quashing their natural intellectual potential. This would give the Germans an artificial and permanent advantage over the peoples they conquered for the planned 1000 years of the Fourth Reich.

This tribalistic, cruel and barbaric suppression of human potential has been ongoing since the dawn of humankind. The tragedy is that by suppressing entire racial, ethnic, linguistic, religious, gendered, and economic groups, all humanity loses out as geniuses exist in all races, religions, genders and classes of humans. What if Nikola Tesla, e. g., were not given the opportunity to prosper in America where he would invent alternating current, the dynamo, the radio, remote control, and many other society-"transforming” inventions? The world we know today would be far different and far more difficult. Stephen Jay Gould once remarked:

"I am, somehow, less interested in the weight and convolutions of Einstein's brain than in the near certainty that people of equal talent have lived and died in cotton fields and sweatshops”.

Contrary to the views of pseudo-intellectual racists and other elitists, the spectrum of human intelligence is very diverse and pervasive. All human beings have varying talents and tremendous potential to contribute to the greater good. We derive from the same fundamental DNA- based biochemical mechanisms that produced human consciousness and our amazing creativity Thus, more often than not, the differentiation of wealth, education and privilege is not based on true talents (with the exception of a talent to steal and deceive, or to self-promote and/or bully to the top), but mostly on luck (e.g. luck of birth/inheritance/tribal affiliation and/or being at the right place at the right time).

I will never forget a discussion with my former anthropology professor who had worked extensively in Africa helping people displaced by the construction of dams. He told our class that he had met amazingly intelligent African children who would be millionaires, doctors, inventors, etc, if they only grew up in the US. It made me realize how lucky I was to live in the US. But it also made me realize that my "luck” was at the expense of other children who had the misfortune of growing up in nations where human potential is actively being suppressed where (e.g.) nearly the entire nation is being exploited for some natural resource (e.g. diamonds, oil or ivory). And now, the US itself is itself edging toward Third World nation status as the natural potential of millions of Americans is being quashed by uber-wealthy "elites” who are greedily stealing the natural resources of our nation (water, land, oil, gas, minerals etc) for themselves which belong to all Americans as they desperately seek to force the "Great Reset” on humanity.

The recent hysterical and transparent efforts to foment a war between the Ukraine and Russia can also be viewed as an attempt by Western nations to yet again frustrate the natural potential of Slavic peoples whom they fear (as the most numerous of Europe's tribes and who own the majority of Europe's land and thus natural resources). They are deeply jealous of the Slavs as Cain was jealous of Abel. The time-honored divide and conquer methods seek to get the genetically-related Ukrainians and Russians to fight one another as happened in the recent Yugoslav civil war between Croats, Slovenians and Serbs. Relentless efforts to desperately quash the Nord Stream 2 pipeline seek to prevent Russia from economically benefiting from the West. But they ultimately won't succeed because of the economic realities of trading with neighbors and the need for relatively clean natural gas. The world is getting sick and tired of a unipolar world where a hypocritical self-appointed "policeman” chronically says: "do as I say, not as I do,” leading by force instead of example, treating other nations as vassals.

As we have seen in the past, these well known methods to suppress human potential inevitably backfire and we witness a tug-of-war/oscillation of "good fortunes” between different tribes. As an example, the Asiatic Mongols and Turks overran much of Eastern Europe enslaving many and reducing the human potential of mostly Slavs enabling Western Europe to prosper. Some centuries later, the Western Europeans invaded North and South America, enslaving and wiping out many of the indigenous peoples (who are believed to have migrated from Mongolia) who had lived there for many millennia. This is a zero sum game which merely frustrates all human potential, creates a motive for revenge, and pits humanity against itself. Yet, now, more than ever, we all need to work together to help the planet and encourage all human potential to find and implement solutions to our many problems.

As Western power wanes in this century and as natural resources become ever more scarce due to human activity, climate change and over exploitation, I worry that the situation will escalate to WWIII which no one will win and we will all lose. Is this to be the fate of our world?