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Helen explained that by the time the madness finally ended in 1648, Germany had lost vast segments of its population. Whole areas had been completely emptied of people. Cities had been reduced to villages, and countless villages had simply disappeared forever. She said that Augsburg, for example, a city of 100,000 had a mere 5000 people left when the Thirty Years War ended. In Magdeburg, 20,000 people were butchered to death in 1631, of which General Pappenheim, one of the victors, had said that "there had not been such a glorious victory won since the siege of Troy and destruction of Jerusalem."
"How can this have happened?" I asked in disbelief.
She nodded. "This sort of thing results when one isolates love from the universal domain, by calling it a private thing, thus leaving the universal scene open to the looting and murdering of entire nations," said Helen.
She turned to me and said in a very quiet voice. "I hope that you are beginning to understand now the critical nature of universal love, the love that flows laterally between one-another. I hope that you can see it as a fundamental, universal principle."
"Have I been blind all my life?" I said in reply. I had to admit that I had been.
"It's not a case of blindness, Peter. It's a case of a lack of science. If you lack an understanding of the science of civilization you stand to loose civilization. That applies to individuals and nations. That is also something that the professor doesn't understand. He understands to some degree that the human being is a distinctly different species, incomparable with any other, because of our incredible creative capacity. Civilization is the outcome of that. Everything in civilization has been created by human beings. If you would take that away there would be nothing left that supports human existence and 99.9% of mankind would die. No other species has the capacity support itself to such a vast extend with its own inner resources. Of course the outcome that we call civilization is vast and profound so that a scientific approach is needed to gain even a faint understanding of it. My American friend outlined
a foursquare matrix for it as a scientific platform that is designed to put the major aspects of our humanity into relationship with each other for a greater appreciation of them and to enable a more focused development of them in our daily living,. Without that there will always be another Pappenheim gleefully wrecking civilization.
"Let me illustrate why this kind of an approach is necessary. For that illustration, let's consider nuclear physics. It is impossible to understand nuclear physics without recognizing the existence and characteristics of the unique particles that make up an atom, such as electrons, protons, and neutrons, including the underlying variety of quarks that construct these phenomena that we recognize as electrons, protons, and neutrons, and that the quarks themselves are but moving points of energy that in their action derive an electric charge. We can't get anywhere in nuclear physics without recognizing these constituent unique elements. The same sort of process is necessary for understanding the nature of civilization, which can't fully appreciated without and understanding of the major constituent elements of it. Here is where my friend's contribution comes into focus. She took the four biblical rivers out of the biblical context and used them in metaphor as a platform to define the 'rivers' of our humanity unfolding into civilization.
"The first river is Pison, which she defined as 'the love of the good and beautiful, and their immortality.' The good and the beautiful, which is truly immortal, has long been the focal point of the cultural aspects that stand behind periods of renaissance, including the political transformation that created the USA. We find this element expressed in music, and our understanding of the principles of music; and in literature, and our understanding the principles of metaphor and irony and tragedy; and we find it echoed in the beauty of art, architecture, clothing, even the beauty of ourselves as human beings, physically and mentally. The developing of the good and beautiful in our humanity closes the door to the vile artificial impositions of counter-culture games that promote violence, murder, self-isolation, conformity, and the emptiness of virtual reality. We need a strong focus on the beauty of our humanity that pervades the real world. My friend calls this the dawn of our civilization.
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