I am going to make a bold declaration: the true evil of the Empire is not that it was formulated or that it endeavored, but that it persisted. There was a time when the Empire was a conceptual framework, a modality of governance, and perhaps even needed. Appropriate to the needs of times, humans with epochal and vast visions were born, they seized control and made empire. This is because they could deliver. Delivery to humans is vital, and that characteristic of delivery precedes the mode, intention, nature and quality of delivery. This will make some humans go in an uproar, but I will repeat myself, this time cloaked in an analogy: You need food. And that fact precedes whether the food is good, bad, rightly-acquired, wrongly-acquired, thinning, fattening, of good quality or bad quality. The bottom-line is that organisms require food to survive, thrive, grow and accomplish. Governance, essentially, is about delivery. Whoever delivers, wins.
THAT precedes the nature and kind and quality of governance, doing and delivery. I am not saying they are not important, I am just suggesting that we put things in the right order. And we remember the fundamental that governance is needed.
When populations are not self-governing or in mental or other disarray, their control is seized by an entity which can be benevolent or malevolent, right or wrong, delivery quality or poverty.
The problem with Empire is when it is poorly-constructed or doing unjust and incorrect delivery–or when it lingers, like a seedpod that won’t open and release the seeds.
Empire was meant to burst and release democratization and sovereignty. It is its failure to yield to the urges of Time that has made it malevolent, and made its “seed”, the people, enraged and chaotic.
People are but the children of Empire. They are not an opposition; they are a re-formation. They are an evolutionary stage. And therefore, the Empire vs. People construct, in some ways, is an illusion–it is the same thing on two ends of the continuum of time and maturity. The word “reform” essentially means to “change shape”. It is not “make something new that is composed of different bodies”. It is the same body in a new shape, and that shapeshifting shifts the quality of character and cognition simultaneously.
People are not “versus” the Empire as much as they are a different shape of it. We are essentially comparing chicken to egg–but when I say, “I favor PEOPLE in People vs. the Empire”, I am saying, “This is a time for the egg”. The chicken has done its run. And guess what, the egg WILL become a chicken, Mama chicken (Empire, government) has to stop fighting for eternal longevity, and understand that you yield to live.
How will the People become the Empire? By creating active, aware, engaged local citizenships. In their homes, towns, and communities. In their businesses, in their fields of work. And above all, through personal excellence and leadership.
Image: “Protest“–Painting by Tomas C Mendoza