There is no point in hoping that certain world bodies like the United Nations will bring peace on earth. From the day of its commission, it has remained merely a tool in the hands of the so-called superpowers to settle their own political and ideological agendas. What is happening at present in Ukraine and the utter failure of the United Nations to bring an end to the Russian invasion has again proven this fact. Now we can include Gaza genocide by Israel. But the present generation might wonder, then, what is the purpose of even creating such world bodies to serve the interests of only those few superpowers rather than addressing the real issues of all nations. Well, the Russian invasion only highlights the utter failure of such world bodies like the UN. But when one reads what was written about it back in 1945, it will prove the fact that there is no point in trusting such organizations that continue to serve the vested interests of superpowers. Read this to know more:
“In the relations of war and peace, a conclusive failure had been that of the United Nations. I had gone to San Francisco in the spring of 1945, like hundreds of other people, in high hope, and had been almost immediately soaked in the cold shower of disillusionment. The opening days of the conference which brought the United Nations into being were themselves a key to all that was to follow. Then, as the ensuing two years and a half brought every weakness into the open and emphasized it anew, the fact appeared to be that this attempt to regulate the dangerous interaction of rivalries between nation-states was either insincere (i.e., not intended to succeed) or hopelessly inept, or possibly a combination of both: it was a clamorous, reverberant stage for the exaggeration of differences, not for their settlement. And the ghost that stalked the corridors was, through all this time, atomic energy: the triumph of mathematics or of the Upanishads (it matters little which you say) but in any case not of the humane instincts which forever try to mitigate the devastation brought by strife.” — Vincent Sheean, Lead, Kindly Light, New York, Random House, 1949, p. 5
Sheean wrote this back in 1949. What is the condition now? The readers know much better than me. As a joke, I say, ‘The American vibration, because of their collective consciousness, which created some different kind of human consciousness, could be one reason for the several world bodies that are located in America. Of course, a few are outside it, like the ICJ, etc. But Americanism now dominates the world—even space and the cosmos—not allowing any other collective consciousness of other people to also have their views in world affairs. If my statements seem biased and judgmental, read what another from the West says about America by replacing the final word in this quote from ‘West’ to ‘World’:
And to one highly intelligent and not unsympathetic observer of sixty years ago, one who had drunk deeply of American mission, it seems that the word American conveys, first of all, immense energy, resourcefulness, and inventiveness—a habit of identifying problems and solving them—and, as a result, first-rate technology. In the second place it reflects as intense attachment to a particular theory of government, one that does not grow naturally in most of the world. Third, it stands for an uninhibited approach to money and a corresponding concern with size and scale. Fourth, it stands for what Uchimura1 calls “materiality,” a somewhat stunted appreciation of certain dimensions of life, notably those relating to (p.222) the transcendent world. Americans have a tendency to translate those very dimensions into technological terms, problems to be solved, something that can be all worked out—big boots in the Temple, as one might say. Uchimura, a Christian and a convert, not a Buddhist or a Shintoist, senses in the religious culture of his country (traditions that as to their content he has rejected) a recognition of transcendent reality compared to which most of these vigorous, confident American missionaries, in common with most of their countrymen, are on beginner’s slopes.
America as the Ultimate Development of the West
A British commentator can take no comfortable pride in his own position on hearing such an analysis. No doubt much of what Uchimura says would apply to the whole of the Western presence in the East…But insofar as America stands for the West, America is the West writ large, Western characteristics exemplified to the fullest extent. Americans themselves have always been aware that they represent the decisive and ultimate development of the West….— Andrew F. Walls, The Missionary Movement in Christian History, New York, Orbis Books, [1996], Tenth Printing 2005, pp. 222-223
Notes:
1 Kanzo Uchimura, “Can Americans Teach Japanese in Religion?” Japan Christian Intelligencer 1 (1926): 357-61. For other views of Americans se W. R. Hutchison, “Innocence Abroad: The ‘American Religion’ in Europe,” Church History 51 (1952): 71-84
There is no point in hoping that certain world bodies like the United Nations will bring peace on earth. From the day of its commission, it has remained merely a tool in the hands of the so-called superpowers to settle their own political and ideological agendas. What is happening at present in Ukraine and the utter failure of the United Nations to bring an end to the Russian invasion has again proven this fact. Now we can include Gaza genocide by Israel. But the present generation might wonder, then, what is the purpose of even creating such world bodies to serve the interests of only those few superpowers rather than addressing the real issues of all nations. Well, the Russian invasion only highlights the utter failure of such world bodies like the UN. But when one reads what was written about it back in 1945, it will prove the fact that there is no point in trusting such organizations that continue to serve the vested interests of superpowers. Read this to know more:
“In the relations of war and peace, a conclusive failure had been that of the United Nations. I had gone to San Francisco in the spring of 1945, like hundreds of other people, in high hope, and had been almost immediately soaked in the cold shower of disillusionment. The opening days of the conference which brought the United Nations into being were themselves a key to all that was to follow. Then, as the ensuing two years and a half brought every weakness into the open and emphasized it anew, the fact appeared to be that this attempt to regulate the dangerous interaction of rivalries between nation-states was either insincere (i.e., not intended to succeed) or hopelessly inept, or possibly a combination of both: it was a clamorous, reverberant stage for the exaggeration of differences, not for their settlement. And the ghost that stalked the corridors was, through all this time, atomic energy: the triumph of mathematics or of the Upanishads (it matters little which you say) but in any case not of the humane instincts which forever try to mitigate the devastation brought by strife.” — Vincent Sheean, Lead, Kindly Light, New York, Random House, 1949, p. 5
Sheean wrote this back in 1949. What is the condition now? The readers know much better than me. As a joke, I say, ‘The American vibration, because of their collective consciousness, which created some different kind of human consciousness, could be one reason for the several world bodies that are located in America. Of course, a few are outside it, like the ICJ, etc. But Americanism now dominates the world—even space and the cosmos—not allowing any other collective consciousness of other people to also have their views in world affairs. If my statements seem biased and judgmental, read what another from the West says about America by replacing the final word in this quote from ‘West’ to ‘World’:
And to one highly intelligent and not unsympathetic observer of sixty years ago, one who had drunk deeply of American mission, it seems that the word American conveys, first of all, immense energy, resourcefulness, and inventiveness—a habit of identifying problems and solving them—and, as a result, first-rate technology. In the second place it reflects as intense attachment to a particular theory of government, one that does not grow naturally in most of the world. Third, it stands for an uninhibited approach to money and a corresponding concern with size and scale. Fourth, it stands for what Uchimura1 calls “materiality,” a somewhat stunted appreciation of certain dimensions of life, notably those relating to (p.222) the transcendent world. Americans have a tendency to translate those very dimensions into technological terms, problems to be solved, something that can be all worked out—big boots in the Temple, as one might say. Uchimura, a Christian and a convert, not a Buddhist or a Shintoist, senses in the religious culture of his country (traditions that as to their content he has rejected) a recognition of transcendent reality compared to which most of these vigorous, confident American missionaries, in common with most of their countrymen, are on beginner’s slopes.
America as the Ultimate Development of the West
A British commentator can take no comfortable pride in his own position on hearing such an analysis. No doubt much of what Uchimura says would apply to the whole of the Western presence in the East…But insofar as America stands for the West, America is the West writ large, Western characteristics exemplified to the fullest extent. Americans themselves have always been aware that they represent the decisive and ultimate development of the West….— Andrew F. Walls, The Missionary Movement in Christian History, New York, Orbis Books, [1996], Tenth Printing 2005, pp. 222-223
Notes:
1 Kanzo Uchimura, “Can Americans Teach Japanese in Religion?” Japan Christian Intelligencer 1 (1926): 357-61. For other views of Americans se W. R. Hutchison, “Innocence Abroad: The ‘American Religion’ in Europe,” Church History 51 (1952): 71-84
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