Just finished reading a book on Genghis Khan (and the Making of the Modern World) by Jack Weatherford. Have always wondered why is Alexander ‘the great’? Does being good at killing people guarantee greatness in history? Unlike Alexander who conquered great armies with skill and strategy and promptly died, Genghis Khan also conquered much greater armies but lived long enough to improve and enhance the lives of his subjects in the ensuing decades peace. He and the Mongols who followed him, especially his grandson Kublai Khan, created an empire so much ahead of anything else available in the world in those days that it couldn’t stand the test of the times.
One thing that becomes clear as you read the Mongol history, which is just a slice of all history, is that humans cannot live without conflict for very long. We have an insatiable hunger for violence and war. Every stretch of peace and prosperity is the result of elimination of all opposition, as proved by Genghis Khan. And every conflict, borne out of the lethargy and complacency of peace as proved by Kublai Khan.
Moreover, it is in the interests of the rulers to keep their subjects in perpetual strife, as George Orwell showed in his ‘1984’, keeps unemployment at bay and keeps unquestioning passions raging by dividing the universe into US and THEM.
We have around 7000 years of recorded history and it hasn’t changed much over the course of it. We need wars, we need violence, unless we rewire the human brain. But do we want to banish nights, for the days seem all the more beautiful for it.
Photo credit Jochen Smolka
