Polybius, a Greek historian, writing two centuries before the birth of Christ, praised the Romans for their use of religion in controlling the behaviors of the ignorant masses. Seventeen-hundred years later, Machiavelli repeated what Polybius had said about religion being a useful tool for governing the masses. How do we know that churches today, which align themselves with earthly national governments arent simply using religion to continue to control us with a mixture of religion and national patriotism until a global government can be perfected? Especially, in light of this information that was written down fifty-four years ago: If the human race does succeed in saving itself from self-destruction, as I believe it will, our attitude and policy towards nationalism may eventually need some revising. At the present moment we are struggling to build a world-community against time, with the threat of self-destruction hanging over our heads, if we fail, or even if we are too slow in achieving success. Since nationalism is the chief obstacle to world unity, nationalism is mankind’s Enemy Number One in the current chapter of the Worlds history, and our present task is therefore to draw nationalism’s teeth, if, however, we do manage to establish a world-community, its powers will be likely to go on increasing at the expense of the powers of the subordinated national units; and we may come to a point at which, instead of continuing to play nationalism down, we may find ourselves anxious to keep it alive, in order to keep enough life in the national units to make it possible for them to go on preforming their useful functions. If their citizens were to cease to care about them and take an interest in them, that would be the end of local variety in the World, besides being the end of local self-government. And a complete centralization and a complete uniformity, on a world-wide scale, would have a deplorably impoverishing effect on human life. It would reduce to a handful the number of people in a position to make choices and to take initiatives. (published 1960).
Posted on: Sat, 12 Jul 2014 02:49:46 +0000
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