An empire is a political order with two important characteristics:
Contemporary critique of empires
Around 550 BC, the imperial vision of Cyrus the Great of Persia to rule the whole world for the sake of all people was startling because, up till that point, Homo Sapiens thought in terms of ethnic exclusivity, dividing humanity into two parts: we and they. Cyrus, on the other hand, tended to be inclusive and all-encompassing by recognizing the basic unity of the entire world.
Similar imperial visions were developed in China. According to traditional Chinese political theory, Heaven (Tian) is the source of all legitimate authority on earth. Heaven chooses the most worthy person/family and gives them the Mandate of Heaven. This person rules over All Under Heaven (Tianxia) for the benefit of all its inhabitants.
This “benevolent” imperial vision passed on to Roman emperors, Muslim caliphs, Indian dynasts, and eventually to Soviet premiers and American presidents. It has justified the existence of empires, and negated attempts by subject people to rebel and independent people to resist imperial expansion.
Empires have played a decisive part in amalgamating many small cultures into fewer big cultures. Empires purposefully spread common ideas, institutions, customs and norms to:
The benefits were sometimes salient - law enforcement, urban planning, standardization of weights and measures - and sometimes questionable - taxes, conscription, emperor worship. But most imperial elites earnestly believed that they were working for the general welfare of all the empire’s inhabitants.
The cultural ideas spread by empire were seldom the exclusive creation of the ruling elite. With a few exceptions, most empires have begot hybrid civilizations that absorbed much from their subject people. However, the process of assimilation for the subject people was painful and traumatic.
|Stage|European Imperialism| |-|-| |A small group establishes big empire|The Europeans establish the Europeans empires| |An imperial culture is forged|Western culture| |The imperial culture is adopted by the subject peoples|The subject peoples adopt English and French, socialism, nationalism, human rights, etc.| |The subject peoples demand equal status in the name of common imperial values|Indians, Chinese and Africans demand equal status with Europeans in the name of common Western values such as nationalism, socialism, and human rights| |The empire’s founders lose their dominance|Europeans lose control of the global world, in favor of a multi-ethnic elite largely committed to Western values and ways of thinking| |The imperial culture continues to flourish and develop|The Indians, Chinese, and Africans continue to develop their adopted Western culture|
It is tempting to divide history into good guys and bad guys, with all empires among the bad guys. Yet most of today’s cultures are based on imperial legacies. If empires are by definition bad, what does that say about us?
There are schools of thought that seek to purge human culture of imperialism, leaving behind what they claim is a pure, authentic civilization, untainted by sin. These ideologies are at best naive; at worst they serve as disingenuous window-dressing for crude nationalism and bigotry. There has been no “pure” culture since the dawn of recorded history.
Nobody knows how to solve this thorny question of cultural inheritance, but the first step is to acknowledge the complexity of the dilemma and to accept that simplistically dividing the past into good guys and bad guys leads nowhere.
The global empire being forged before our eyes is not governed by any particular state or ethnic group. It is ruled by a multi-ethnic elite, and is held together by a common culture and common interests. Throughout the world, more and more entrepreneurs, engineers, experts, scholars, lawyers and managers are called to join the empire. They must ponder whether to answer the imperial call or to remain loyal to their state and their people. More and more choose the empire.
Since all social orders and hierarchies are imagined, they are all fragile. The crucial historical role of religion has been to give superhuman legitimacy to these fragile structures.
Religion is a system of human norms and values that is founded on a belief in a superhuman order. A successful religion must possess two further qualities:
Animists thought that humans were just one of many creatures inhabiting the world. Polytheists (believers that the world is controlled by a group of powerful gods), on the other hand, increasingly saw the world as a reflection of the relationship between gods and humans. Polytheism exalted the status of humankind because it implied that our prayers, our sacrifices, our sins and good deeds determined the fate of the entire ecosystem.
Polytheism is conducive to far-reaching religious tolerance because there is no difficulty for the devotees of one god to accept the existence and efficacy of other gods. Polytheism is inherently open-minded and rarely persecutes ‘heretics’ and ‘infidels’.
The big breakthrough with monotheism came with Christianity. Then came Islam.
Monotheists have tended to be far more fanatical and missionary than polytheists. Since monotheists have believed that they are in possession of the entire message of the one and only God, they have been compelled to discredit all other religions.
Dualism explains that the entire universe is a battleground between good and evil, and that everything that happens in the world is part of the struggle.
Monotheism has a hard time dealing with the Problem of Evil. Why do bad things happen to good people? How does an all-knowing, all-powerful good God allows so much suffering in the world? For dualists, it’s easy to explain evil. Bad things happen because there is an evil power loose in the world doing bad things.
Therefore, montheism such as Jewish, Christian, Muslim absorbed numerous dualist beliefs and practices. e.g. Satan in Christianity. In fact, monotheism has become a kaleidoscope of monotheist, dualist, polytheist and animist legacies. The average Christian believes in the monotheist God, in the daulist Devil, in polytheist saints, and in animist ghosts.
Natural-law religions believe that the superhuman order governing the world is the product of natural laws rather than divine wills and whims. A prime example is Buddhism. Siddhartha Gautama found that suffering is caused by the behavior patterns of one’s own mind. No matter what the mind experiences, it usually reacts with cravings, and craving always involves dissatisfaction. He concludes that a person who does not crave cannot suffer and develops a set of meditation techniques to train the mind to experience reality as it is without craving (a.k.a. nirvana). “Suffering arises from craving”, also known as dharma, is seen by Buddhists as a universal law of nature.
The first principle of monotheist religions is “God exists. What does He want from me?” The first principle of Buddhism is “Suffering exists. How do I escape it?”
The modern age has witnessed the rise of a number of new natural-law religions such as liberalism, Communism, capitalism, nationalism, Nazism.
Theist religions focus on the worship of gods. Humanist religions worship humanity, or more correctly, Homo Sapiens. It is a belief that Homo sapiens has a unique and sacred nature, which is fundamentally different from the nature of all other animals and of all other phenomena. All humanists worship humanity, but there are three rival sects that fight over the exact definition of “humanity”:
| Liberal Humanism | Socialist Humanism | Evolutionary Humanism |
|---|---|---|
| Humanity is individualistic and resides within each individual Homo sapiens. | Humanity is collective and resides within the species Homo sapiens as a whole. | Humanity is a mutable species. Humans might degenerate into subhumans or evolve into superhumans. |
| The supreme commandment is to protect the inner core and freedom of each individual Homo sapiens. | The supreme commandment is to protect equality within the species Homo sapiens. | The supreme commandment is to protect humankind from degenerating into subhumans, and to encourage its evolution into superhumans. |