Ghengis

A friend of mine asked me once how i come up with the different essay's i write every week and it made me kind of sit back and think about where they develop. When i first started this blog i wanted to concentrate on the similarities we all share, the need for food, water, shelter, love and safety and how every single one of us would die if those needs weren't met.

i wrote about different aspects of all those things for a long time then branched out into community. From there it was a small leap into politics which created a never ending stream of topics. Today i'm in the midst of reading a book about Ghengis Khan and the man has me mesmerized. i wanted to step back a bit because Ghengis Khan was a ruthless killer of men, women and children but also one who saw the benefits of uniting all the tribes of the plains of Asia into one people in order to stop the waring.

Ghengis had his own set of grievances, he had scores to settle and tribes to conquer but unlike most Khans he saw the value that could be attained by not killing his rivals off. Instead he united them to fight the Tatars and later other dynasties enabling him to expand his realm of influence and create the Mongol empire.

He was a dangerous, violent, cold-blooded killer a really awful man but one who had a vision. He and his generals killed millions of civilians and rivals during his campaigns in order to unite them all.

i have a really hard time with his methods for he was a man that spent his entire life killing in order to unite. He believed the end to war was to war, but in fact that was never the case for the wars just kept coming. There was no peace.

When you read about him you discover that he was tolerant of all religions, that he based his support for generals and lesser administrators on merit and not heredity or status. That acquiring money and riches was not his goal. That he may have tried to create the first civil state and believed in the equality of all men and women. He was not bound by custom and was open to advancing his concepts through the wisdom of others.

His Pax Mongolica at times had a stabilizing effect on trade, communications and the social, cultural and economic life of his conquests. He is credited with initiating the connection of the east and the western trade routes during his grandson Kublai Khans reign and it was said that during those days a maiden could travel in the realm safely on her own. But the wars went on and eventually his empire was destroyed.

So where am i going with this? i don't know. i find Ghengis fascinating, i like his ideas of unity and equality, i like that wealth meant nothing to him. i find common ground with his values for he revered his family and friends and rewarded honesty with his loyalty. i also find that his methods supports my opinion that war is not the way to create change for in the end he did not achieve a permanent solution. His empire lasted one more generation and self combusted. War never stopped and there was no peace.

Today the idolization of material things is a burden. If we could put aside objects and not be attached to them it would be easier to see that we are all part of the human cell, we are all in this together and together we can make a better world. The division that Ghengis tried to eliminate still afflicts us today. Instead of tribes we have Republicans and Democrats, poor and rich, educated and not.

What will it take to learn how to work together for common goals? Ghengis couldn't figure it out and it appears neither can we.

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See ya next week.