I am in no position to address this question, let alone devote the time to answer it. First of all, like most ordinary mortals, I am no authority nor do I have the wherewithal to submit to the readers what divides human society in general. All right, I do have a personal definition of it in my own mind and so does everyone. The question is why each of us regard our differences differently. Yes, we hold elections like the one that just occurred in the U.S. as a way to pursue or maintain a common purpose. However, we know too well that deep within each of us, we view division among us as influenced by a lot of deep-seated beliefs, far beyond what elections bring about. The divide today is deeper and the chasm had become much too wide.
So I invite once again a guest contributor to this blog. Readers will remember Its message in "Mirror, Mirror on the Wall" which It penned and submitted in June, 2018. It garnered wide interest worldwide for quite a time there and is still being read today in places like the United Arab Emirates, Turkey, Germany and Finland, each culturally and politically and socio-economically different from each other.
It, the guest writer, is an extraterrestrial and remains with an undefined gender to me so I refer to it as "It", although it found a way to call itself Seguey, which It explained in "Mirror, Mirror on the Wall". It also wrote "The Rise and Fall of Empires" last July, 2018. It has proven to be quite an independent observer of the human (earthling) experience. Here is Seguey once again.
Report, Seguey, Sector 3rd Planet from Medium Stellar Mass, Constellation Cassiopeia
(To the readers of my report take note that I am using earthling's nomenclature for their location and language for my report)
I am writing about this phenomenon that earthlings seem to struggle with - division among themselves. This earthling condition may have been going on for eons of time, I surmise, and based on the mere five centuries of my own conscious existence, perhaps long before my own evolution from the simple organism that I co-evolved with when I first arrived on this planet.
Over the course of nearly five hundred years of dispatching my report back to you - my home planet of a two solar system - I do not expect any response any time soon nor do I even presume that any of my hundreds of reports have even arrived yet nor will there even be anyone there to receive them. But I must continue with my mission just as many more like me that are tasked the same way are sending theirs from wherever they are in various parts of this galaxy. I estimate that even at light speed, my reports are not likely to arrive there in a thousand of earth years and another thousand, at least, for me to expect getting a response.
The question I am trying to answer with this report is: Why the most complex of all the organisms inhabiting this small rocky planet orbiting an almost insignificantly minor star in a swirling, endless sea of approximately two hundred billion other stars in an average size galaxy do not get along - one nation to the next, even when borders are shared - despite the condition of being confined in the only place they hope to ever occupy from birth to the end of their existence?
I am puzzled by this phenomenon. There are many reasons I can enumerate but not likely to offer one complete and definitive explanation. One earthling lifetime had over the last two centuries been increasing as to be exceedingly longer than, say, what they were in the 1500's to today's average. But the definition of a generation as identified by this century's historians is often confined to about every twenty five years. Earthlings (they self identify as humans, or scientifically, homo sapiens) even have labels for their generations, such as, the baby boom generations, the X,Y and Z and millennial generations, each of approximately twenty five years apart or approximate duration.
In my last report on "The Rise and Fall of Empires" which I dispatched two years ago, I discussed several of these empires as having lasted for approximately ten generations (250 years). Let me review them below:
Empires Dates of rise and fall Duration in years
Assyria 859-612 B.C. 247
Persia 538-330 B.C. 208
(Cyrus and his descendants)
Greece 331-100 B.C. 231
(Alexander and his successors)
Roman Republic 260-27 B.C. 233
Roman Empire 27 B.C.-A.D. 180 207
Arab Empire A.D. 634-880 246
Mameluke Empire 1250-1517 267
Ottoman Empire 1320-1570 250
Spain 1500-1750 250
Romanov Russia 1682-1916 234
Britain 1700-1950 250
It is almost as if once an empire begins, a clock starts the inevitable countdown to its demise. One would think that later generations of empires would have learned by now from history but sadly by their own admission, someone said:
‘The only thing we learn from history,’ it has been said, ‘is that men never learn from history.’
It seems built in to their DNA - the blue print of all earthly organisms. Or, is it something else? I touched on it a little bit in "Mirror, Mirror on the Wall" but today I am inclined to further believe that without exception, empires decline from within, or to be brutally frank, they self destruct. Many schemes were tried to prolong the empire's existence by way of orderly successions as the Romans tried with Caesars or through birthrights as employed in western European royal kingdoms but with the same results. Some lasted only within one lifetime of leadership - the birth and death of a single leader. One started and ended abruptly within a decade, as with the Third Reich, that was supposed to last a thousand years.
As I indicated in all my reports, I lived and settled in different areas of this planet to learn more closely, especially those where empires begun and to study their influences over the rest of earth's population. I am currently residing in one that although they do not self-identify to be an empire, it is for all intents and purposes. This nation helped to decisively end two major conflicts in Europe and Asia, and it remains influential in spreading the western culture and leads in technology and economic development. It is also the most successful in introducing and maintaining the system of self governance through a democratic process that worked for the last two and a half centuries that several hundred years earlier were tried but never sustained during the Greco/Roman era, for example. The British Empire did adopt a Parliamentary system with royal titular heads but by then the sun was already setting across its vast empire.
The USA as an empire is in great turmoil, presently. It is as I write arguably approaching its prime, having witnessed its zenith, but it is one conclusion that will not find wanting of opposing opinions. Be that as it may, it is never easy to hold on to that status for so long because, as it had always been in all of earth's past histories, rivalry from emerging powers - both real and pretenders - is always a valid threat. Today, an economic and military power is emerging from the east and it is not without a long lineage. It is after all a power that had a long history of dynasties all of which attempted empire building but not much beyond regional reach (Qin and Ming dynasties to name two). Nevertheless, it had left many indelible cultural and technological influences in the world. Today, it is indeed in great position to grab empire status with a population of 1 / 7 of the entire earth population - a formidable work force and a military and a national will to forge toward world leadership. Economically, it rivals the USA and clearly way past all of European economies combined.
I must, however, focus on where I am presently residing which is the country that just went through a hotly contested if not pivotal election as described by many political analysts. Pivotal or not, it is an exclamation point if one were to describe it as the apex of great division among its people. Or, perhaps it should be described as the abyss from which it will not be easy to come out of, if at all. (1776 to today approximates to 250 years)
Once there was one leader in Europe who was then an acknowledged brilliant military strategist whose empire building ambition seemed a forgone conclusion at one point. But there was something he feared the most. He is well known to have said the phrase below but he was not the original source of it:
"The pen is mightier than the sword."
The sentence was coined by English author Edward Bulwer-Lytton in 1839 for his play Richelieu; Or the Conspiracy.
True, This! —
Beneath the rule of men entirely great
The pen is mightier than the sword. Behold
The arch-enchanters wand! — itself is nothing! —
But taking sorcery from the master-hand
To paralyse the Cæsars, and to strike
The loud earth breathless! — Take away the sword —
States can be saved without it.
Napoleon Bonaparte's biggest fear was the press, called as such for the printing process in making paper copies during that time. It was the press to begin with that built up his reputation and he knew too well that it had the power to destroy him.
Back to my report, although it was necessary to mention that footnote in history because as I mentioned earlier, humans do not seem to have the capacity to learn from it.
In its present form and in an environment different from Napoleon's time, the press is now known as the mass media. But more than that but no different from the one that Napoleon was so afraid of, it is a king maker and a destroyer of kings when it wants to. I will explain.
I begin by asking why someone who attempted to become president three times in the past and failed, not even making it past the primary selection in his own party at the prime of his political skills and quick wit, is now the president-elect at age 78. He begun the quest thirty two years ago in 1988 but never came close by yards where close meant to be measured in inches. In all three attempts the press then gave him the once over and were unforgiving in uncovering many of his frailties.
What changed? What happened? The new (mass) media of today is what happened. Today's media no longer serve as reporters of news but had evolved into makers of news. And not only have they become king makers, they want an active role in the making of kingdoms. They have become from passive observers to active servers of their own agenda.
I sent under separate cover and zip file many other accounts and analyses of today's media which I am at the present time less equipped to give it proper treatment. I will in later reports dwell on it a little more. There will be ample time for that and further observation on my part will be necessary to see how the new leader will be treated once in the seat of power and more importantly what state the nation shall be in about two years when another election happens for the legislature. Meanwhile, I attached as well with this report for your review the last two reports on "The Rise and Fall of Empires" and "Mirror, Mirror on the Wall" for back ground. It will be necessary before a definitive conclusion can be made as to whether this present empire I am residing in is indeed at the brink of its prime and whether the new emerging power from the east will succeed in its quest to rise as another is about to fall. Until my next report, I bid farewell for now.
https://abreloth.blogspot.com/2018/06/mirror-mirror-on-wall.html
https://abreloth.blogspot.com/2018/07/the-rise-and-fall-of-empires.html
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