Saturday, February 23, 2008

The Art of War, Love and Benevolence Part 3

Benevolence- the desire to do good to others; goodwill; charitableness. Sounds pretty easy, doesn't it? Or maybe I'm wrong. As humans it is hard to deny the existence of good and evil whether you believe in God or not. How do we distinguish benevolence from love? The answer is benevolence is a part of love and vise versa. Love can be defined as many different things, but most of the time love entails affection, and benevolence entails a more broad, yet concrete understanding of "good, and pure actions". If one is spiritual, God's LOVE (v) for humans, can be described as BENEVOLENT(adj.). Benevolence is a core value of the Chinese society and Confucianism (Confucianism's affects in China, can be compared to Christianities affects in America) is deeply rooted in benevolence, and this traditional belief has affected, and is in the hearts of many people in China and in Asia.
With the emerging power of China's economy, in the near future we should expect to see a demand for greater values (Chinese values that is). Look at America, for the past two centuries, and more recently the past 60 years, America has been on top. We are considered as the global policeman. We hold other countries to our values, and sometimes go to war over them. This concept is not entirely impossible for us to be on the receiving end of this legislation. Whoever holds the power, holds the "correct value's" and is privileged for recording history.
When speaking of the future, we have to consider many different views, Sun Tzu is recorded speaking of future warfare: "The means by which enlightened rulers and sagacious generals moved and conquered others, that their achievements surpassed the masses, was advance knowledge, Advance knowledge cannot be gained from ghosts and spirits, inferred from phenomena, or projected from the measures of heaven, but must be gained from men for it is the knowledge of the enemy's true situation."

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