One Vast and Ecuminical Whole: the Long Shadow of Jan Smuts
marhobane.substack.com
Jan Smuts bequeathed to the world a political and intellectual inheritance so vast and so deep, that it simply cannot be overstated. His worldview has reached into every ruling institution, making him one of the most influential men of the 20th century. It is a totalising and all-encompassing system, the promise of universal peace, liberty and welfare through total world government, the sublimation of all political and cultural difference in a global English-language order governed by a European elect, anointed with the vanity of higher insight, to guide the whole of humanity into a future where there will be no fear, no poverty, no anxiety, no difference, no prejudice, no discomfort, no pollution, no disharmony of man and nature, and no resentment of the governing elite. His grand theory of holism has given us the modern field of ecology, the entire philosophical framework for both the modern environmentalist movement, and the governance system which responded to it. It has given us the concept of the holistic, the nation of South Africa, the Anglo-Irish Treaty, the Balfour Declaration, and the United Nations, and as a result, the contemporary understanding of human rights and national self-determination. It is also shot through with terrible hypocrisy.
One Vast and Ecuminical Whole: the Long Shadow of Jan Smuts
One Vast and Ecuminical Whole: the Long…
One Vast and Ecuminical Whole: the Long Shadow of Jan Smuts
Jan Smuts bequeathed to the world a political and intellectual inheritance so vast and so deep, that it simply cannot be overstated. His worldview has reached into every ruling institution, making him one of the most influential men of the 20th century. It is a totalising and all-encompassing system, the promise of universal peace, liberty and welfare through total world government, the sublimation of all political and cultural difference in a global English-language order governed by a European elect, anointed with the vanity of higher insight, to guide the whole of humanity into a future where there will be no fear, no poverty, no anxiety, no difference, no prejudice, no discomfort, no pollution, no disharmony of man and nature, and no resentment of the governing elite. His grand theory of holism has given us the modern field of ecology, the entire philosophical framework for both the modern environmentalist movement, and the governance system which responded to it. It has given us the concept of the holistic, the nation of South Africa, the Anglo-Irish Treaty, the Balfour Declaration, and the United Nations, and as a result, the contemporary understanding of human rights and national self-determination. It is also shot through with terrible hypocrisy.