Sermon on the Mount and Golden Rule: Global Peace Science Today
BALKANS AND EASTERN EUROPE, 9 Jan 2017
Rudolf J. Siebert – TRANSCEND Media Service
2 Jan 2017 – In November 2016, the Obama Administration’s United States Executive Order # 13685 prohibited us, to conduct in any form, including chairing, lecturing, skyping, signing of certificates, etc., our 13th International conference on Religion and Civil Society: Cooperation between the American and the Slavic World in Yalta, Republic of Crimea.
The Executive Order # 13685 intended to be a sanction and penalty for the Referendum of the Crimean people to separate from the Ukraine with good reasons, and to have its own state, which was interpreted as annexation and occupation by the Russian Federation.
Each service to the conference in Yalta was taken by the Obama Administration as a recognition of the new Republic of Crimea, and as such was forbidden.
We obeyed the Executive Order # 13685, in spite of the fact, that it was based on wrong intelligence.
The law is the law, as long as it is not rescinded. We are a nation of laws. The Executive Order # 13685 did not only violate the international right to free speech and to academic freedom, but also the Sermon on the Mount, the very foundation of Christianity, which is summarized in the Golden Rule, and which is present in all world religions, and has been translated into secular morality as well, into the categorical imperative, and into the a priori of the unlimited communication community, and as such can be the basis for a global ethos: particularly its 4th commandment, not to engage in the Jus or Lex Talionis, in retaliation and revenge, in eye for eye. (Exodus 20-21; Matthew 5-7; Luke 6).
While many people consider the 4th commandment of the Sermon the Mount at best merely to be a matter of private morality, President Putin and the Russian Federation have proven in the past year, in the spirit of the great Russian Orthodox tradition, that it has validity also in society, state, and history.
When in 2016 a Russian plane was shot down by the Turkish military, Russia did not retaliate, but was tolerant.
When on December 29, 2016, the Obama Administration expelled 35 Russian diplomats, and closed two Russian facilities in Washington D.C, because of a supposed interference by the Putin Government in the American Federal Election process, via electronic manipulation and hacking, in favor of the Trump candidacy for the American Presidency, Russia moved to the moral high ground, and did not reciprocate and retaliate by expelling an equal number of American diplomats. President Putin even invited the children of the American diplomats to the Kremlin for a Christmas and New Years celebration.
In this spirit of the Sermon on the Mount, the Putin Government and the Russian Federation were able to broker an armistice in Syria after the fall of Aleppo in December 2016, to which also the United States were invited, but in which they did not participate.
In this spirit of the Sermon on the Mount, the present equally exceptional frontrunners of the human species in world history, the Slavic and the American World, with their tremendous evolutionary potential, could have discourse and could cooperate with each other away from barbarism, and toward a more just and peaceful world society. Politics is more than to identify the enemy. Politics must not always be dirty. The collision of the religion-based civilizations is not a historical necessity. The pagan fascists and corporatists are simply wrong!
The march of the crusaders to Novgorod, and the march of Napoleon and Hitler to Moscow, must never be repeated again!
For centuries Russia protected Europe against Asian invasions. Otherwise there would have happened many more Attilas and Dschingiskans, and Europe would never come into existence.
Russia stopped the first, most barbarous wave of international fascism in Stalingrad and Kursk. That should never be forgotten.
The Slavic World can not be integrated into the European World. Eurasia is a system in its own right and with its own sovereign center of political, and cultural, and religious concentration, which is to be respected by the European Union, and by the NATO, and by the American World. Such recognition is foundational for world peace.
The Administration of President Obama, a Protestant Christian and recipient of the Nobel Peace Price, made a good start 8 years ago, when in the spirit of the Sermon on the Mount he really wanted to end the Cold War, which he rightly considered to have been a great misunderstanding and mistake, and to discourse and cooperate with the Russian Federation, but then ceased to build bridges, and build walls instead.
We can only hope, that the new Trump Administration, which won the election with the support of the Evangelicals and Catholics, will in the spirit of the Sermon on the Mount not build walls, but will rather erect bridges, and will thus continue the good beginnings and intentions of the Obama Administration, particularly concerning the relations between the American and the Slavic World, for the best of humanity. Hopefully, the Trump Administration will also cancel and rescind the Executive Order # 13685 as fast as possible, and we shall be able to continue our productive international conference in Yalta, in November 2017.
Everything flows, everything changes. The eternal truths remain but they change the forms of expression reflection in different times, in different cultures and civilizations. Today, Global Peace Science (GPS), created during eleven years in the Global Harmony Association (GHA) by 174 coauthors from 34 countries, is one of the most urgent and highest forms of Sermon on the Mount and its Golden Rule, which is the first in the history reflection of the universal social harmony in the Christian religion. Immanuel Kant suggested its philosophical reflection in the definition of social harmony as human nature, which excludes war and provides “perpetual peace.” GPS offered for the first time in the history of its scientific reflection on the basis of discovery of the deep societal structure of SPHERONS – eternal harmonious classes of the population employed in the eternal harmonious spheres of social production. Therefore SPHERONS constitute a societal structure and social genome of eternal harmonious and peaceful human nature in scientific knowledge. This is the historical significance of GPS as a common spiritual ground of harmony, like the Golden Rule, for peaceful cooperation of American and Slavic worlds and other civilizations.
See in more detail: Rudolf Siebert. The Slavic and the American World: The Possibility of Peaceful Cooperation. Global Peace Science, New Delhi, 2016, Chapter 10.62, p.396-401:
http://peacefromharmony.org/docs/global-peace-science-2016.pdf
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Rudolf Siebert, PhD, Professor of Comparative Religion at the Western Michigan University, USA. http://www.rudolfjsiebert.org/, rsieb3@aol.com
This article originally appeared on Transcend Media Service (TMS) on 9 Jan 2017.
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