A lesson of Esau for a New Year wish

These chapters tell the story of the struggles of binary opposites, and deceptions. Quite interestingly, the skill at deception usually earns the main characters praise and privilege rather than punishment.
Esau and Jacob are twin brothers of Isaac, with Esau being the firstborn that would have earned him the birthright of inheritance of goods and possession of their aged and blind father. The difference between Esau and Jacob could not be starker, both in physical appearance and character. Esau is his father’s favourite son, while Jacob is his mother’s.
One day, after a long day of hunting for food, Esau, hairy and brash, returned home famished to the point of fainting. Jacob, smooth-skinned and crafty, who usually stayed in the tent with his mother had on the table a mess of pottage – a pot of lentil stew – that their mother Rebekah had cooked for their father. Esau desperately begged Jacob to give him that mess of pottage to quench his acute hunger. Jacob asked Esau what he could give him in return for the favour of getting the stew that was meant for their father. Esau, out of misery that must have impaired his judgement, surrenders his birthright to Jacob for that mess of red pottage.
In the final moments on his deathbed, Isaac commands Esau to go out and hunt for a deer so he could have his favourite meal before passing. During Esau’s absence, Rebekah came up with a wicked plan to trick Isaac to give Jacob, not Esau, the blessing. She dressed Jacob in goatskin that made Jacob seem hairy like Esau. She cooked the best meal for Isaac from the two goats that she ordered Jacob to acquire. To make a long story short, Isaac, finally convinced that the son standing before him was indeed Esau, gave Jacob the blessing, which was the birthright of Esau but had already been forfeited by Esau himself.
From this story arises the old adage – “Selling one’s birthright for a mess of pottage”. It connotes the shortsightedness and misplaced priorities that trigger the exchange of rightful thing that has far greater value for something valueless or trivial or of much inferior value.
Great poets such as William Shakespeare, Jonathan Swift and Lord Byron referred to that old saying that became the legend of Esau’s quandary. Karl Marx in “Das Kapital” referred to it – that workers, compelled by social conditions, were forced to sell the whole of their active lives in return for the price of their means of subsistence. American liberal philosopher Henry David Thoreau talked about his resolute determination not to short-change his freedom for the need to conform to society’s obligations. The moral of those timeworn tales should not be lost upon us as we approach a new year. History keeps repeating itself because we humans have not changed much since the time of Isaac, Esau and Jacob, or even before.
As a nation, Thailand is at an important, pivotal juncture, both domestically and internationally. We are embarking on ambitious social, political and economic reform programmes aimed at righting the wrongs that have plagued us for decades. Corruption, cronyism, elitism, discipline deficiency, plutocracy and kleptocracy are among the turpitudes we want to eradicate. But these “sins” are like melanoma cancer; we see only a tiny tip of the viciously deep-rooted sarcoma that is embedded inside the body. Many personalities so ubiquitous in the news these days as the good Dr Jekyll as in Robert Louis Stevenson’s novella “The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde” are in fact the evil Mr Hyde. The web of deceit has become so intricate that any attempt to untangle it could be deadly destructive, if farsightedness and astute judgement are lacking. Internationally, it is fair to say that Thailand is geopolitically and strategically the most important mainland gateway and a critical balancing element in the Southeast Asian region and the growingly contested fierce power play in the South China Sea. The United States and the West, with their self-righteousness and double standards, have largely spurned us due to the military coup in May. So we felt like we needed to go lean on other powers. But such an urge is not so dissimilar to the yearning for a rebound, to prove one’s sense of self-worth, no matter how meaningless that rebound is, after a relationship fails. Such impulse almost always results in a greater demise of self-esteem and in many cases, far more tangible and intangible loss and damage.
If we see how a worthy reform could be carried out and an effective foreign policy could be conducted, we need not look beyond our border. King Rama V showed us the way. Reform cannot be done on a piecemeal and haphazard basis; it has to be considered against the backdrop of the entire social, political and economic paradigms. In terms of foreign policy, we cannot jump from one bed to the next “in search of”.
A marriage is usually easy and amicable, but a divorce is normally messy and costly. We don’t have to feel that we have to find a mate, because every nation is intrinsically for itself and its own self-interest. We just need to stand firmly on our ground and pivot. King Rama V did not pawn Thailand’s sovereignty to gain favour or patronage from any of the colonial powers.
So, as a New Year wish and a resolution, let us not repeat Esau’s mistake. In the affairs of the country, we cannot, must not, sell our birthright for a mess of pottage.