Empire of Tolerance
Been looking a bit at Yale professor Amy Chua's new book Day of Empire, a breezy textbook on the history of empires. Her premise: It is a sustained policy of toleration that augments an empire's power, and abandonment of that policy sinks it.
About half-way through the book she asks a provocative question, indeed it is one of the questions serious historians have asked through the ages, at least in some form. That question:
Is it possible for a world-dominant power to be genuinely tolerant in the modern, "enlightened" sense?
She asks this under the pretext of how much nations have or haven't tolerated the people of other cultures, races, or mores. Toleration in the "modern, 'enlightened'" sense certainly means affording civil protections or even privileges to those outside the provincially mainstream social norms and who are residing within the purview of the nation if not wholly within its borders.
The assumption behind asking the question to begin with is that history is filled to the brim with examples of powerful nation-states dominating others with imperialist fervor, and that this may be the only way it can be a world power. The idea here is that the capital held by "others" must be forcibly extracted. If it could not be forcibly extracted would a nation still be viable as a "hyperpower"?
The problem with answering this question is that there are indeed two ways to answer it.
There is the World way, the way most attempt to address it, and the Kingdom way, the way one with the mind of Christ would answer it. Those answering it the World way cannot comprehend any other way of answering it--to them the Bible is just a book of exploitive Western precepts however touching some of it may be.
To the one living by the Kingdom it is easy to see how and why the World bonks around trying to answer this question, but they also see the way God's economy works. It is not too complicated, really.
The World System is already a hyperpower, and has been manifest through the ages in some form in all the empires Chua describes. It is so much the hyperpower because God made it that way, with something around seven times as much strength as any wanna-be power. It has that strength because many men would refuse to call on God, so tremendous force has been required to keep them in check. This has quite often been ruthlessly-- and predictably-- horrific.
God put into each man the capacity, however, to do amazingly terrific things with his hands and feet. The human capital of all men put together is an incredible force, but then, ahh,
You've got that sin.
What a dilemma; hence, Chua's question. It is the problem of all authoritative governance. Expand the capital and at the same time restrain the destructive forces within each man to compromise that. Of course, governors are just such men and many times mistakenly associate destructive behavior with race or ethnicity.
Chua laboriously tries to answer the question with examples of how much nation-states considered hyperpowers in some measure have or have not allowed the capital of "undesirables" to be utilized for the benefit of all.
The question from there is this: Is the capital extracted or is it enhanced?
The Kingdom's answer is that the World can only extract it, indeed it can only know extraction. It is all still exploitation even in light of magnificent works produced from that capital. It is the great achievement of dutiful World operatives to convince everyone, including the exploitees, that they have been benevolently "tolerated."
Without Christ, however, all such persons are still dead. They've used capital for the sake of showing off magnificent works, which in and of themselves are very fine things, they really are. Sadly it is all still dust on top of dust when compared to the Kingdom and what Christ died for...
Love for one another.
So the real question Chua and all the World's scholars cannot ask is really the more revelant one. That is,
Is it possible for people to truly understand the meaning of what a world-dominated power is supposed to do however they make it look, and then to see the Kingdom of God's phenomenal explosion of capital if such people entered it and loved others with His love?
The answer makes the World's "toleration" and magnificent works look like piddle.
A bit more on the World's Hyperpower is here.
About half-way through the book she asks a provocative question, indeed it is one of the questions serious historians have asked through the ages, at least in some form. That question:
Is it possible for a world-dominant power to be genuinely tolerant in the modern, "enlightened" sense?
She asks this under the pretext of how much nations have or haven't tolerated the people of other cultures, races, or mores. Toleration in the "modern, 'enlightened'" sense certainly means affording civil protections or even privileges to those outside the provincially mainstream social norms and who are residing within the purview of the nation if not wholly within its borders.
The assumption behind asking the question to begin with is that history is filled to the brim with examples of powerful nation-states dominating others with imperialist fervor, and that this may be the only way it can be a world power. The idea here is that the capital held by "others" must be forcibly extracted. If it could not be forcibly extracted would a nation still be viable as a "hyperpower"?
The problem with answering this question is that there are indeed two ways to answer it.
There is the World way, the way most attempt to address it, and the Kingdom way, the way one with the mind of Christ would answer it. Those answering it the World way cannot comprehend any other way of answering it--to them the Bible is just a book of exploitive Western precepts however touching some of it may be.
To the one living by the Kingdom it is easy to see how and why the World bonks around trying to answer this question, but they also see the way God's economy works. It is not too complicated, really.
The World System is already a hyperpower, and has been manifest through the ages in some form in all the empires Chua describes. It is so much the hyperpower because God made it that way, with something around seven times as much strength as any wanna-be power. It has that strength because many men would refuse to call on God, so tremendous force has been required to keep them in check. This has quite often been ruthlessly-- and predictably-- horrific.
God put into each man the capacity, however, to do amazingly terrific things with his hands and feet. The human capital of all men put together is an incredible force, but then, ahh,
You've got that sin.
What a dilemma; hence, Chua's question. It is the problem of all authoritative governance. Expand the capital and at the same time restrain the destructive forces within each man to compromise that. Of course, governors are just such men and many times mistakenly associate destructive behavior with race or ethnicity.
Chua laboriously tries to answer the question with examples of how much nation-states considered hyperpowers in some measure have or have not allowed the capital of "undesirables" to be utilized for the benefit of all.
The question from there is this: Is the capital extracted or is it enhanced?
The Kingdom's answer is that the World can only extract it, indeed it can only know extraction. It is all still exploitation even in light of magnificent works produced from that capital. It is the great achievement of dutiful World operatives to convince everyone, including the exploitees, that they have been benevolently "tolerated."
Without Christ, however, all such persons are still dead. They've used capital for the sake of showing off magnificent works, which in and of themselves are very fine things, they really are. Sadly it is all still dust on top of dust when compared to the Kingdom and what Christ died for...
Love for one another.
So the real question Chua and all the World's scholars cannot ask is really the more revelant one. That is,
Is it possible for people to truly understand the meaning of what a world-dominated power is supposed to do however they make it look, and then to see the Kingdom of God's phenomenal explosion of capital if such people entered it and loved others with His love?
The answer makes the World's "toleration" and magnificent works look like piddle.
A bit more on the World's Hyperpower is here.
Comments
Post a Comment