25.02.2007
A Philosopher’s Way: Federalism & Democracy
_ By Khun Hom
I believe “FEDERALISM” comes in many shapes and forms, the limiting factors being the ideals and the spirits of men who institute them. Genuine federalism and democracy is inseparable. It doesn’t really matter whichever comes first. Even a man of great vision and science like Albert Einstein was fully aware of the profound element that needs to be embodied in humanity with “DEMOCRACY”. Albert Einstein speaks from his own experience of persecution like everyone of us displaced from our homeland. I am pretty sure his words speak volumes for all of us who have suffered for the last half a century. The eternal truth can not be more explicit than his profound feeling quoted below _
"My political ideal is democracy. Let every man be respected as an individual and no man idolized. It is an irony of fate that I myself have been the recipient of excessive admiration and reverence from my fellow-beings, through no fault, and no merit, of my own. The cause of this may well be the desire, unattainable for many, to understand the few ideas to which I have with my feeble powers attained through ceaseless struggle. I am quite aware that for any organization to reach its goals, one man must do the thinking and directing and generally bear the responsibility. But the led must not be coerced; they must be able to choose their leader. In my opinion, an autocratic system of coercion soon degenerates; force attracts men of low morality... The really valuable thing in the pageant of human life seems to me not the political state, but the creative, sentient individual, the personality; it alone creates the noble and the sublime, while the herd as such remains dull in thought and dull in feeling.
"This topic brings me to that worst outcrop of herd life, the military system, which I abhor... This plague-spot of civilization ought to be abolished with all possible speed. Heroism on command, senseless violence, and all the loathsome nonsense that goes by the name of patriotism -- how passionately I hate them!
"The most beautiful experience we can have is the mysterious. It is the fundamental emotion that stands at the cradle of true art and true science. Whoever does not know it and can no longer wonder, no longer marvel, is as good as dead, and his eyes are dimmed. It was the experience of mystery -- even if mixed with fear -- that engendered religion. A knowledge of the existence of something we cannot penetrate, our perceptions of the profoundest reason and the most radiant beauty, which only in their most primitive forms are accessible to our minds: it is this knowledge and this emotion that constitute true religiosity. In this sense, and only this sense, I am a deeply religious man... I am satisfied with the mystery of life's eternity and with a knowledge, a sense, of the marvelous structure of existence -- as well as the humble attempt to understand even a tiny portion of the Reason that manifests itself in nature."
Let us pray to Lord Buddha, the Generals will come to their human sense one day before long.
[Khun Hom is one of the Shan elders who declared Interim Shan Government, Federated Shan States, a few years ago.]
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