THE CAINS ARE STILL POWERFUL, BUT WE MUST WIN

 A notion stays with me about the story of Cain and Abel.
I've mentioned before that Cain tilled the ground, like his father, but Abel was a herdsman. If you've had the good luck to see quotations from any medieval chronicle comparing tillers with pastoral people, you will know that tillers tend to look down on herders as 'lazy' and 'idle' compared with their hardworking, virtuous selves.
And from that I ask a question: was Cain's motivation always to show himself as somehow 'better' than his brother? Is that why he tilled the ground? Actually, Cain probably learned that from his father--and did he pick up what might have been the same attitude toward Abel? I wonder because, more and more, I feel that the desire to show oneself somehow 'better' than (fill in the blank) seems to be at the root of most of the troubles we bipeds make for ourselves and other creatures besides.
Don't mistake me here and, more importantly, don't confuse the desire just described with a passion for any particular discipline and a concomitant desire to do one's personal best in that particular occupation, job and/or field of study. The two are very different. And herding can be hard work too; it's a different kind of work which seems to require more attention to smaller details than does plowing and planting. It too can take hard labor, especially when helping a ewe, cow or goat deliver a newborn.
James Herriot has written that two things are foundational in shepherding: cleanliness and gentleness. Would this point to Abel being a gentler character than his brother? Maybe. Certainly he had to be more attentive to more mobile creatures. Anyone know how much mental activity herding requires as opposed to plowing and planting? My all-too-urbanized guess is, quite a bit more.
When we learn new things, when learning is still a joy and has not yet been entirely reduced to drudgery work to make others richer than oneself, we often want to share it with others close to us. However, those others very often take our desire to share as an attempt to set ourselves above them and, thus, results in our being slapped down: "Who CARES?!" "No one wants to hear all that useless nonsense!" "THAT doesn't put any money in the bank!" And so on, very literally, ad nauseam.
But with such an attitude as that toward knowledge which is at least new to somebody close to us, why are we surprised when we have cause to worry that so many of our fellow citizens don't really want to learn anything new? We want--indeed, we need to if we are to stay a democracy--educate our fellow citizens in such a way that learning is a lifelong joy to them and to us as well!
Does anyone reading these words know of anything that can kill, or at least stymie, that desire like 1) the impression that the learner is just trying to show what a know-all s/he is and 2) the impression that new learning is worthless unless it can bring in cash right now?
Anyhow, Cain probably made his offerings to God with more than a little of that 'superior' attitude while Abel made his sacrifice with some real joy and gratitude. And of course Cain didn't listen to God when God told him he needed to look within and try again with a better spirit but blamed his brother and murdered him. Rather like those today who feel more 'virtuous' and are angry that the larger society doesn't defer to them and who want to kill everyone who isn't a carbon copy of themselves!
However, today's Cains are also the ones with the most firepower and (mostly, but not exclusively) the most wealth. They don't enrich others from this, but only themselves. In much the same way that they weep only for themselves when they are deservedly caught in evil. And all of this stems from their desire to show themselves as 'better', 'more virtuous', than the rest of us. And as they don't comprehend tears for anyone but themselves, they don't comprehend and/or recognize innocent delight in learning and differences but only see in others what they know to be true (and will never acknowledge) about themselves. They are the Cains of our time. And the rest of us had better be ready for some seriously bloody angry reaction from these evilly envious bipeds.