Rearing Monarchs #21:

Dominion and Creativity, part 5
Unification Thoughts, January 2023

Welcome back
Welcome to the new year; I hope that your close to the last one was very refreshing and this new one will bring many new blessings. In case you’re joining us for the first time, it’d be best to take a look at the purpose and focus of this Rearing Monarchs series, of which this article is the 21^st.¹ In this article, rather than introducing a new concept, we must continue developing a critical one expressed at the end of the previous article. To start, here’s the quote that closed that article:

…Cheongpyeong will become the place where all the historical traditions of each of these (185) countries can be displayed. Moreover, on this foundation we will build a training center and educational institution that will teach people how to renew the traditions of various national cultures, and show how to connect them with heaven…. (282-046,1997/03/10)

• Chambumo Gyeong, Book 5, Chp1,  Sec 6, p 4

We must look more closely into those two words in the last sentence: renew and connect. Because those are the two actions which would allow the harmonious coexistence of the world’s different cultures and their traditions, raising them from an interesting but disparate collection into diverse yet complementary expressions of the original ethical values that underpin the heavenly culture of the future.

Renewal of tradition

To understand how this would be achieved, we need only to consider how the traditional institution of monarchy is transformed by the Ethics of Godism (i.e., Great Kingships, Great Subjects, Realms of True Love, etc.). When we look at actual history, it’s rather evident that belonging to a royal family usually granted its members power and privilege over the population, a situation which too readily lent itself to exploitation, injustice and suffering. And which all too often resulted in rebellions that either succeeded or were crushed. As we’d previously observed, the vertical structure was there, but it was bereft of its original, Principled foundations.

More precisely, what was missing was an understanding of proper ethical dominion. As we’d previously explained, the foundational points of original ethics are: God’s love, the Four-Position Foundation, and the Three Objects Purpose (Those foundational ideas were explained here.) These three ideas completely enrich and elevate the understanding of dominion, so that the traditional institution of monarchy is thoroughly renewed. This is possible because the ethics of Godism explain that in vertical relationships, there are complementary virtues to be expressed downward from the subject, as well as upward from the object (as was explained here) and illustrated in Figure 1:

And why would this be so? Let us recall the profound implications of this deceptively simple passage from the Principle of Creation:

In interpersonal relationships, the beauty that a subordinate returns in response to the love of a superior is called loyalty, and the beauty that children return in response to the love of their parents is called filial piety. The beauty that a wife returns in response to the love of her husband is called fidelity.

• Exposition of the DP, p. 38, §4.3.1

There’s actually an important injunction here to take note of. And it’s that loyalty, filial piety and fidelity are not simply matters of Principled duty for the object, but rather that they are the natural response that should be evoked by the love of the subject! The injunction that’s not to be missed is that it’s the Principled responsibility of the subject to give love—It is not their Principled right to require or demand attendance simply because of their position as elder or subject. I realized this most clearly because Unification Thought’s Ethics identifies benevolence as the essential form of parental virtue that children respond to.

Additionally, Unification Thought explains that there are horizontal virtues that express God’s love in peer-to-peer relationships. This was explained here; and this is the figure which summarized those virtues:

I don’t have the impression that the above-mentioned passage from Section 4.3.1 of the Principle of Creation is widely discussed or understood. But it’s a transformative understanding that could prevent some of the misguided behaviors of the past. So I earnestly hope that our grandchildren will learn it as they try to actually build a culture of heart in the Settlement Era.²

Connecting traditions to Heaven

Regarding the connection that Father Moon mentioned, the main one is the connection of family and community members to the heart of Heaven. We had previously explained that critical connection as object consciousness. Through it, the essential conduit is created through which God’s love can manifest in the earthly plane. Here is a diagram about that connection from a handout Dr. Sang Hun Lee gave at his Unification Thought seminars:

So then, when we go back to the three examples of cultural tradition mentioned last time—one from the Philippines, another from Japan, and one from native Americans—each would be renewed and connected through the Ethics of Godism. And that reminded me of this old but honorable tradition in western culture:

While it’s true that this is no longer practiced in litigious societies, I think that if it was renewed and connected to original ethics, its moral authority could be revived and the need for voluminous legal contracts between individuals for simply everything might be reduced. And on the larger scale, it’s also evident that holiday traditions like Christmas and Easter need to have their original meaning and value recovered by being renewed and reconnected.

To recap the main point, by fully infusing the complete understanding of God’s Love into family and community relationships, the various traditions would be elevated into true sources of cultural joy and pride. And they could help bind the nations through a shared, common experience of the Realms of True Love.

And that’s the critical significance of the quote we’d opened this article with: important and potentially good traditions and institutions can be found in the different cultures. Through renewing and connecting them, we can help them fulfill their original purpose to enrich the new culture of heart.

Conclusion

This completes the previous article about guiding our young ones to fulfill their third blessing. In our next installment, we will summarize the three kinds of education we have been discussing for the past 15 months.

◀ Previous article • ❖ • Next article ▶