The Scriptures and Usurpation 101

            Reading the scriptures is always interesting.  There are many beautiful, poetic passages, especially some of the Old Testament ones about the Messiah, but also there are some straight up weird things.  Or maybe it’s just my perspective that makes them weird.  Sometimes knowing more about a society’s culture goes a long way to clarifying things.  In particular, whenever I read the Book of Ether from The Book of Mormon, I’m always amazed at how bad at maintaining usurped power those people were! 
            Let me clarify slightly, so the entire Book of Ether spans hundreds, if not thousands of years of Jaredite history in fifteen chapters.  It tells of the divine guidance that led to the civilization’s formation and the wickedness that led them to destruction. (Maybe I should have put a spoiler alert in there somewhere.)
            Anyway, an overarching pattern throughout the entire history is how the kings were constantly being overthrown, usually by a son or brother or the like.  What boggles my mind is that the usurpers almost always kept the members of the previous regime in captivity, and they were even terrible at that because the people in captivity kept on having kids who then grew up and took back their father’s kingdom!  Isn’t it Usurpation 101 to dispose of all members of the previous regime?!  You don’t want them to be able to take the power back from you!  And if there was some societal tradition that barred you from killing them, at least put them in real captivity where they aren’t going around having more children!  If you have to keep them imprisoned make them do hard labor in gender-specific camps!  I feel like that’s just common sense.
            Anyway, I feel a bit bad that this is the overall theme that stays with me after I finish the book.  I get that it’s really about how unrepentant wickedness destroys both people and society, but the entire Book of Mormon teaches that.  Plus, the Nephites and Lamanites weren’t distractingly bad at staging a coup!

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