by Frank Kaufmann
All things expand to their next highest level, one level at a time. This is natural and inevitable. The only way to thwart this process is to die or to become arrested at some level of development which results sooner or later in becoming an oddity. Individuals naturally act in ways which give rise to families. Families naturally grow into clans, and so forth. This intuition into the nature and development of the social order make Unificationists, by dint of their education uniquely positioned respond to the contemporary breakdown in the global order.
We live in paradoxical times. Unquestionably our race is at its most advanced state, both technologically and intellectually. Access to information is all but instantaneous. Human sciences (such as economics, political science etc.) devoted to analysis and problem solving are at unprecedented levels of sophistication. Presuppositions of equality, and tolerance have reached most levels of society (not just among the elites), and much that was reserved for a tiny upper class such as international travel, the output and acquisition of information and entertainment etc. also has become democratized. One recalls Gary Trudeau's homeless couple pirating on the internet with a stolen laptop, spliced into telephone cables out on the street. Fifteen year old kids wear beepers, and people who cannot spell or identify their own state capital have gold cards and large lines of credit.
Great thinkers abound throughout the political spectrum, and information technology makes it easier than ever for them to be prolific and widely read, heard, or seen. From Buckley, Saffire, George Will and Thomas Sowell on the one side to the gang at The Nation on the other, there is no lack of powerful minds in our time. Even our own incontinent leader is widely acknowledged as one of the most intelligent men to ever occupy the oval office. Were it not for the black hole located where his morals and integrity might otherwise be found, we would all stand in serious danger of his effectively implementing the errant ideology by which he and his pit crew are guided. The point is not to bemoan the fact that Americans have foisted their own mirror image up the flagpole this time around, but rather to point out that the intellectual development of our leaders is greater than it's ever been.
With such an advanced state of informational, technological, and analytical powers at our finger tips, how is it that the public discourse is characterized by little other than patent confusion, and attachment to minutiae and second order analysis? Those that take even one step back from being lived by life should quickly see that the even greatest minds dare only to address the issues three grades off the real cutting edge. To see Boutros Boutros Ghali's pathetic, half- hearted, whimpering, finger-pointing-cum-apology, in response to the UN's failure in Rwanda, can only convince even the most Panglossian optimist that we've got trouble in Paradise. Indeed we have experts who can trace demographics of refugee movement, or historical, geographical, and economic factors in the unfolding of various orgies of human and property destruction, from Bosnia, to Downtown L.A. (perhaps Rodney King can use part of his $3.8 million to airlift supplies to the 200,000 blacks in Rwanda, who rather than being beaten with police clubs have been massacred with machetes by fellow blacks), but none present thoughts or positions which even approach a comprehensive account of our current state of affairs.
This is not to condemn our current leaders. Their plight is understandable. They have not been chosen to provide a clear account of contemporary providence. There is no way they could accurately deal with the larger picture ignorant of the Divine Principle. What continues to frustrate is not the obvious lack of insight or the fact that the most brilliant among us simply haven't a clue, but rather the fact that neither they nor responsible citizens seem to acknowledge this current intellectual and leadership crisis. What persists is an the attempt to carry on with business as usual, as though current problems are neither more nor less intractable than they have been in past ages. The problem with this stance among leaders and experts is that even the common and uneducated clearly see or intuit that all traditional centers of stability are in thoroughgoing decline, the world is disintegrating before our eyes. This collective refusal to admit of crisis represents a willful choice to live in denial on a massive scale. Insofar as the suffering and carnage resulting from such a decision increases at alarming rates, the decision is unacceptable, and probably culpable.
The first requisite for analyzing and solving a problem is to accurately identify what "type" of problem it is. A problem for an individual calls for a solution for appropriate to individuals. Similarly families or clans have their respective, unique characteristics. Each level in the social order is governed by principles appropriate to that level. As we see race riots in America, genocide in Rwanda, and Bosnia Herzegovina, elections of fascist and communist governments in modern states, internal terrorist rebellion in places like Peru and Mexico, we must ask exactly what it is that are we looking at. Are these discrete and isolated phenomena which all happen to be occurring at the same time? Are Bosnian Serbs, Turks (as they try to exterminate Kurds), or Northern Yemeni "bad people," unlike you and me, and Warren Christopher? If so, how did whole races come to be comprised of only bad people? Didn't their mother's love these people? Do we, perhaps, have whole nations full of unloving mothers? If we listen even briefly to television, if we read the New York Times for even one day, one quickly sees, that the discussion of such problem is not of the quality, or focus that encourages one to presume that solutions are forthcoming.
After the fall, the natural forces of creation caused human beings to expand from families, to clans, to tribes. (This, of course, would have occurred in any case.) Due to the failures of providential figures the age of redemption could not occur during any one of these stages of human development. It was not until the emergence of "nations" as a principle for the ordering of human relations that the possibility of a peaceful and harmonious world was fully introduced. Human affairs had reached the level of sophistication in which several tribes cooperated and united under the uniform direction of a national leader. Powerful kings ruled over unified territory and tribes prior to the emergence of a nation which was to form itself under principles reflecting heavenly tradition. That nation was Israel consisting of twelve tribes, united first under conditions of slavery, then under conditions of exodus and migration and finally under conditions of spiritual and political governance while occupying physical land.
That nation and its people could have embodied the principle for "world unification" had it chosen to be guided in its international relations by a person whom God chose to reveal the means by which "international unity" could be achieved. The secret for global harmony perished when that individual was murdered at the age of 33. A community of faith, maintained a spiritual relationship with that individual thus allowing this community to learn and achieve these principles of global harmony only insofar as it related to the maintenance of international cooperation based on common spiritual pursuits, but not insofar as the achievement of international cooperation could occur when the physical dimensions of life were considered, material, intellectual, and cultural resources for example. For this reason wars between nations have persisted in the Christian era.
The mission of the second coming of Christ is to complete the full restoration of the human being. This includes bringing all physical reality into harmony with divinely inspired spiritual purposes. For the individual this means that the impulses of the physical body no longer contradict and overpower the altruistic impulses natural to the spirit. Instead physical impulses naturally cooperate so that each person in fact can become constantly good, rather than live under the constant and depressing experience of only desiring to do good. Correspondingly, with nations (for example), the pursuit of material wealth and cultural superiority does not dominate the national desire to live in harmony with other nations and cultures in a just and peaceful world. This is harmonious state is also meant to exist with the smaller human collectivities such as clans, and tribes.
Reverend Moon discovered the reason why the physical until now tends to contradict and overpower the good intentions by which the spiritual is naturally constituted. He discovered how to reverse this process and establish a cooperative relationship between the body and the mind, or spirit. First he successfully applied these principles and achieved mind-body unity in his own life, and then taught and guided his wife, the second person to learn and achieve this reality. Together Reverend and Mrs. Moon built up a family based on these principles. In so doing they expanded this ability to bring the physical into full cooperation with the good impulses of the spirit, not just to more individuals (their own children, for example), but rather to a family per se, the whole unit could exist as a fully good entity. The members of this family taught their followers (the members of the Unification Church) not only how to become good individuals, but how to expand this capacity this to produce good families. These are the 10's of 1,000's of "blessed" families of the Unification church.
The successful application of the religious teachings taught by Reverend Moon and inherited by these "blessed" families, have effectively served to protect the institution of the family as it came under increasing assault from the ideologues of self-indulgence (primarily in the post-industrial west). Now Pope John Paul II speaks endlessly about the family. The "Dan Quayle Was Right," issue of Atlantic Monthly emerged unchallenged as it established the definitive starting point for all social discourse since its publication. Michael Medved single handedly challenged the confused, insecure hedonists who produce hollywood films in his Hollywood Versus America, and won back ascendancy for family films. The list goes on. Even the free sex crusaders such as Surgeon General Jocelyn Elders use pro family rhetoric. The heavenly side does have a foothold both at the level of the individual, and of the family.
Where the world is rent in bloody and violent discord, however, is at all levels beyond the family; from the tribe outward. The once "United" States is fractured into warring tribes, as chronicled by the likes of Arthur Schlessinger Jr. in The Disuniting of America, Jeffrey Davison Hunter in Culture Wars , and Before the Shooting Begins, and elsewhere. All current wars are tribal or racial: Israel/Palestine, Former Yugoslavia, Yemen, Sudan, Armenia/Azerbaijan, South Africa, Rwanda, Cambodia, Kashmir, and so on. This explosion of tribal and racial warfare can only be defused by two distinct means, which happen not to be known by Henry Kissinger, Abe Rosenthal, George Will, or Al Gore.
There are two sources for the dissolution of racial and tribal war which come from the nation above, and from the establishment of heavenly tribes below. The first necessary requisite is guidance from a unified higher unit, namely a unified nation. This should be the role of America, (and people still look to America to take that role) but America lost its roots and foundation for unity close to 40 years ago. The US itself suffers from tribal and racial division, and has lost the spiritual and moral to stand as a world leader.
In the absence of such a nation, Reverend Moon has made the recovery of such a social entity on earth his primary mission. Thus, he has sought for over 20 years to provide America with access to the principles and wellspring of national unity, but he has, for the most part, been persecuted by established Christians, and racially discriminated against. In addition to sacrificing so that America may fulfill the mission for which it is destined, he seeks to labors so that Korea may adopt the principles he knows are necessary for peaceful re-unification. Should a significant nation inherit from Reverend Moon the capacity to achieve internal unity, one important requisite for the dissolution the contemporary epidemic of tribal genocide will have been achieved.
The second condition necessary to dissolve the proliferation of tribal and racial warfare is the establishment of tribes internally unified under the principles of goodness. Thus on July 1, 1991, following the collapse of Communism, Reverend Moon immediately and urgently inaugurated the institution of Tribal Messiahship. Reverend Moon knew all too clearly that global tensions frozen in the cold war stand-off concealed the history of unresolved tribal hatred and discord. When Communism fell, virtually all world leaders and citizens blindly fiddled in the goofy shadow of George Bush's "new world order." (George Bush wouldn't recognize a new world order if it bit him.) Meanwhile, Reverend Moon acted radically and desperately to pre-empt the inevitable disintegration of our globe into tribal and racial war which bedevil us with greater tribulation as each day passes. Unfortunately, the response of Unificationists to this visionary, emergency action (tribal messiahship) has been less than stellar. The success of the blessed families has not been reproduced at the tribal level. So a condition for a divine foothold at the level of tribes and races is not fixed in any similar to tht which has been achieved by blessed families for the sake of protecting the family as an institution, and social unit. Reverend Moon has the mission for the nation, and he has given the families which follow him the mission for the tribe.
Readers familiar with the severe regime Reverend Moon is putting himself through, working beyond imaginable limits for the sake of the nation, should understand that our own investment at the tribal level should proceed at this same level of intensity. Our work no less than his is all God has for the healing of this globe full of such unthinkable terror and devastation at the tribal and racial level.